


Through the Fire and Flames

by tolakasa



Series: This Christmas Day 'verse [16]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Future, Disabled Dean Winchester, Family, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-01 15:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4024870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tolakasa/pseuds/tolakasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam doesn't mind keeping an eye on his niece while the rest of the family's gone.  There's just one problem: Rissa's terrified of him.  Takes place the summer after "This Christmas Day."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For [nwspaprtaxis](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nwspaprtaxis/pseuds/nwspaprtaxis), who keeps encouraging these bloody people.

"Oh, good, you're up."

Sam shot his brother a bleary glare. Just because he avoided the morning chaos didn't mean he could sleep through it. That private entrance to his room was nice, but it connected to the garage, and the garage echoed—and the sliding door tucked in the closet, the one that gave him convenient in-house access to the laundry room and kitchen, wasn't much for blocking noise either. He knew better than to come out into the mob scene that was a weekday breakfast in this house, but there was no going back to sleep after all that, either. He just holed up in his room until they were all gone. Usually, he ate breakfast in there, safely alone, but he'd forgotten to get milk yesterday. "Don't bet on it," he said, and swore as the milk splashed enthusiastically over his cereal _and_ the counter.

"You did get in kinda late," Dean said, with a smirk, as Sam fumbled with a towel, then managed to get to the kitchen table without spilling the bowl. "You're not wearing any new casts, so I'm guessing it was wedding planning fighting instead of her other kind. Or did she restrain herself to scratches this time?"

Sam reminded himself that his brother was letting him live here for free, therefore it would be rude to murder him. "October tenth."

"I'll take 'dates that mean absolutely nothing' for a hundred, Alex."

"The wedding, jerk." He stared at his spoon for a second, trying to remember what it was and what he was supposed to do with it, before enough of the fog cleared that he could actually take a bite of his breakfast. "The—um—"

"Argument?"

"It wasn't an argument, it was a—a spirited discussion—" Dean snorted "—and it wasn't about the wedding, it was over whether or not to try to get out of the premarital counseling."

Dean grimaced. "Oh, _that_. Yeah. You don't get _out_ of it, by the way, but if you know people, you can speed it up."

"Did you and—"

"Yep. Funny thing, after about twenty minutes, they didn't want us to stay. Gave Marcy a dispensation and everything. _Without_ Anne threatening anybody." Dean grinned, leaving Sam absolutely no doubt as to why _that_ decision had been made. He was not at all surprised that his brother had terrified even the Catholic Church's bureaucracy. "Anyhow. I need a favor around the first of June."

"You're not going to ask me to pick them up on the last day of school, are you?"

"Oh, hell no. I wouldn't wish that on anyone who didn't sign the paperwork."

"Then sure. Whatever you need."

"You might want to find out what it is first," Dean said dryly. Sam looked up from his cereal. "You know the trip we're taking?"

"Do I ever." Dean, Marcy, and all the kids out of the house for nearly three weeks. Sam not only _knew_ it, he was looking _forward_ to it, and thinking about buying a calendar just so he could steal little star stickers from the playroom and put them on it to mark the dates. (It was entirely possible that he had been around the kids too long.) Peace and quiet, the big TV to himself, breakfast without risk of dismemberment, no snide remarks about eating vegetables, no nieces breaking into his room with methods he _still_ hadn't figured out and stealing his pillows while he was still using them—oh, and no coloring, no Legos, no Care Bears, no tea parties, no Ananda insisting that he'd look better with purple eye shadow. For that matter, being able to go _anywhere_ without Ananda doing her crazed leech impersonation—

"Dude, your eyes just glazed over."

"Sorry. Just imagining the vacation _I'll_ have. So what's the favor?"

"Well, our trip— We're going camping."

"Camping?" Sam repeated. "I'm not sure if I should start with the wheelchair or the fact that you're trusting Mikey around fire."

"Camping, not that wilderness survival shit Dad used to do with us," Dean corrected irritably. "Not even real camping—it's like the family equivalent of a summer camp, if I'm understanding it right. Very fancy tents, actual food, accessible showers, rainy-day activities, the whole nine yards. And it's a private campground off a major highway, not the freakin' Himalayas. If Firth can handle it, _I_ can handle it."

" _Can_ Firth handle it?"

"So I'm told."

So the chair really wasn't an issue. "You hate camping."

"I know. I was outvoted."

"This is a democracy now?"

"On some things."

Sam eyed his brother, mentally tallying the grumpiness. "Marcy's idea, huh?"

Dean quit trying to pretend he was taking this gracefully. "They apparently did it once awhile back and now she wants to inflict it on our kids. Every now and then I wonder what's wrong with that woman."

Sam couldn't resist. "Well, she did marry _you_."

"Big talk from the guy marrying Hannah," Dean shot back.

Sam refused to rise to the bait. "You _told_ me to get my own Reynolds," he pointed out. "Although if I'd realized that meant getting five big sisters and two more big brothers, I might have reconsidered. I can barely handle the one I've got."

"Three," Dean corrected. "Sean—"

"Sean's the same age I am. He doesn't count as a _big_ brother."

"Spoken like a true Reynolds in-law," Dean said, laughing. "You're learning, Sammy. Anyway—"

"Mikey. Open flame."

"We have extra fire extinguishers."

"I'll notify the Forest Service."

"The thing with the candle was an _accident_. Anyhow, the favor—"

"I am _not_ going with you just to make sure Mikey doesn't torch anything."

" _Sam!_ It's not Mikey, it's Rissa."

Sam flinched. Rissa had quit running away when he entered a room, at least, or she'd never get to eat, but she still kept as many people as possible between them. And that day in the hall where she'd accidentally collided with him and then froze, just staring at him in sheer _terror_ , like he was some kind of monster, like he was going to grab her and rip her into shreds or worse—

Sam had intimidated a lot of the kids, because of his height or his scar. _Most_ of them had been skittish at first; he was a stranger, and no kid in the foster system trusted strangers easily. But almost all of them had gotten over it pretty quickly—kids in this house knew to trust Dean's judgment when he said someone was "safe"—and he'd never _terrified_ any of them. It was a family joke (one Sam was well aware of) that the kids terrified _him_. And for it to be Rissa, who herself was scarred so badly....

That meant it wasn't just about the scar, but something else entirely.

But no one had been able to get an explanation out of her—not Dean, not Marcy, not Maggie, not even Hannah, who had a special affinity with Rissa because of their shared background as poltergeist victims. Rissa was so scared of Sam that she'd actually had a full-on panic attack when Hannah broached the topic of her being in the wedding, and Sam hadn't even been in the same house at the time.

"Rissa isn't exactly an outdoor girl in the first place," Dean was going on, "and something that involves actual fire—"

"You're not taking her? I thought this was a family vacation." He seemed to remember that applying the word "family" to any kind of event usually made participation mandatory. That was the way his few normal friends had put it, anyway. _Everything_ with John Winchester had been mandatory.

"There's this crafts camp thing she really wants to go to, and since she's so panicky about fire—" Dean shrugged. "Normally, we'd send her to the later session in July, and frankly, I'd rather have her with us, but Marcy thinks it'll be better for her if we don't push too hard. So does her therapist. She's still kinda—fragile—in some areas. Cookouts still give her trouble—she thinks we haven't noticed, but you get a barbecue going and she fucking well _hides_ , assuming she doesn't have an attack outright."

"Panic attack?" That didn't jive with what little he knew about panic attacks.

"It's sort of a combination panic attack and flashback, and it hits her like a fucking seizure. So it's not like she's just whining about bugs and being away from the Internet, it's a real risk. But the camp—it's a day camp. There's no boarding option. She'll be coming back at night and need somebody to drive her there in the morning, plus general watching and having somebody to handle emergencies. Not that she'll give you any trouble—"

Sam froze, spoon halfway to his mouth. His brother couldn't be _that_ stupid, could he? "Dean, Rissa's _scared_ of me."

"No, really?" Dean asked acidly. "'Cause I'd completely missed the way my daughter runs away every time she sees you."

"I just—"

"I _know_ , Sam. Believe me, I wouldn't be asking if there was anybody else."

"Nobody else? There's three hundred relatives within five miles of here. Why can't—"

"Because it's exodus season."

"I don't—"

Dean sighed. "Fifty weeks out of the year, they're all up in each other's business. Like you said, umpty bazillion of them in five square miles. But the only way they can manage that _without_ killing each other is the other couple of weeks. It's family tradition. Between the kids getting out of school at the first of June and the big extended family reunion at the Fourth, they all split into individual families and hit the road. Third and Anne are going to France, Ally's taking Deb and the brats to New York, Kim and Andy go to see his family in Michigan, Nick and Courtney are hiking the Grand Canyon—"

"The size of their family, they could _fill_ the Grand Canyon," Sam muttered.

"Yeah, well, they didn't appreciate it when I made that observation." Dean grinned. "Anyhow, every Reynolds grabs the family and runs and they don't talk to each other until they're all back in Charlotte. No calls, no e-mails, no texts, no _nothing_ unless somebody winds up in the hospital. The most they're allowed to do is post pictures online, and that only if it's stuff people other than the Reynoldses might be interested in."

Sam thought on it a minute. "Is this what Hannah meant when she said we'd have to take our vacation time after the wedding instead of now? I couldn't figure out what vacation time she meant, since I don't have a job and technically she won't have one until June."

"Exactly. Swapping it out _is_ allowed, and that way, she can be _sure_ nobody bugs you two, because if they do, rules say she can try to ruin their vacation next year without penalty."

"They have rules?"

"They can populate a small country, Sam. Of _course_ they have rules."

"Good point."

"We usually go out to Bobby's, and then take a vacation trip later in the summer, but since he'll be coming here for your wedding, we decided not to. Dealing with the kids twice in one year would probably kill the poor man." Sam snorted. "But now we have _this_." Dean practically spat the word, and Sam managed not to laugh. Barely. "Firth's still going to be here—in town, I mean—but he's minding the store. He saves his vacations for DragonCon. Anyhow, the company's a handful in and of itself, and he—well—"

"He can't take care of Rissa if she hurts herself," Sam finished. Firth was as self-sufficient as a paraplegic could be, but the modifications in Dean and Marcy's house weren't _enough_ for him. Not upstairs, anyway, where the modifications were mostly in the master suite, not in the kids' rooms. If the worst happened and Rissa got hurt, there was no way Firth could do anything but call 911, and in some situations, that just wouldn't be enough. Dean said the local response times were pretty good, considering how far outside the city limits they were, but they still weren't what they would be in town, and in that kind of emergency, seconds would count.

"Exactly."

Sam munched another spoonful of cereal, thinking. He knew damn well that Dean _would_ cart Rissa off into the wilderness if they couldn't find someone trustworthy to watch her, even if it might traumatize her more, because Dean would rather have her where he could take care of her than run the risk of something happening where he couldn't protect her.

Besides, no matter how many times he'd brought it up, Dean and Marcy wouldn't accept any payment from him towards rent or groceries—they hadn't once suggested that he find a job, and had even started giving him an allowance when his unemployment ran out, as compensation for taking over the older kids' self-defense training. Not to mention they'd been nice enough to _not_ invite him on this little family jaunt, even if it was just because he and Hannah had their hands full. He owed them.

Still. "You—um—" Sam hesitated, trying to find the words. "You don't expect me to—you know—fix this, do you? Between me and her?"

That got him a smirk. "I don't think you're licensed for that, Sammy." Dean sighed. "No, just keep her in one piece. I mean, if you _do_ figure it out and can fix it, great, but nobody's going to be surprised if you can't. Oh, and I'll have a phone. Marcy will make me leave it in the van, but one of us will be checking it, in case anything happens or you need to know something. And I'll show you where the emergency files are—the medical information and all that, just in case."

"If you're sure," Sam said finally. He wasn't sure this was the best idea, but if Dean and Marcy were agreed on it....

"A little less enthusiasm there, Sammy."

"You know what—"

"Yeah, I know. I promise, if we find a better situation, I'll let you off the hook."

That wasn't exactly reassuring—if there was a better situation, Dean wouldn't be asking Sam to do this in the first place—but Sam let it go. The end of school was still several weeks away. Somebody's vacation plans could change. "Dean— Rissa— Has she ever said _why?_ "

Dean sighed. "No. We didn't notice it until you moved in, anyway. Before then, you were never here often enough for it to matter. She— Well, in a family like this, the others kinda drown her out, you know? And if it was something like that time Tyler got hold of you—" Sam growled, but Dean only grinned. "Our attention was elsewhere, is all I'm saying. Plus, for the longest time, she was afraid to be near strangers because of the burns. I— To be honest, I thought it was just that."

"There wasn't anything they could do? Reconstructive, I mean?"

"What you see _is_ what they could do. At least for now. They had to focus on making sure she got the movement back in her hand and that she'd be able to walk. It was questionable for awhile, especially after she lost the toes and finger."

"What?" There was no way Sam would have seen that she was missing toes, but a finger, given all the stitching she did—

"Two toes and her little finger had to be amputated. It was touch-and-go on the rest of her fingers for awhile." Sam stared at Dean, feeling vaguely sick, and suddenly glad he hadn't attempted bacon or sausage for breakfast. "She mostly compensates with the left, so it's not really obvious, but she's still working on getting all the movement back. All the stitching and knitting is part of that. We bring it up every now and then, but...." He let the words trail off, then shrugged. "She's in the doctor's office every couple of months with followups anyway. If she doesn't want to go in for something optional— Marcy can make her, because I'm not. I know what it's like."

Right. Even in a good year, Dean had to go in for x-rays and ultrasounds of his legs every couple of months, checking for occult fractures and asymptomatic blood clots. In bad years, he wound up hospitalized for _another_ surgery to fix a broken bone. A few years back, he'd broken one leg in three different places over the course of six months.

Sam swallowed another mouthful of cereal. "Could I maybe look at her file, then?" he asked. "Not to be nosy, but— I know it was a poltergeist, but that's about it, and—"

"And maybe there's something in there that might give you a place to start?" Dean finished. "There might be at that. I never looked at it like—" There was an ear-splitting screech followed by a crash from the direction of the playroom. "Oh, for the love of— I'll get it out for you at naptime, assuming we're all still in one piece," he said, wheeling around and heading for the door. "You can see if there's anything helpful. _Hey! Three Stooges!_ " he bellowed. "Who said you could demolish the house without me?"

Ah, mornings. Sam looked down at his cereal, and wondered if he had time for a second bowl before the Terrible Trio decided they needed him.

" _Uncle Sammy!_ " someone shrieked.

Probably not.

 

***

 

Maggie was already finished with her homework, and Sam had claimed her for some extra training; apparently her kicks were too sloppy for his taste. Kevin and Johnny were done too, but since Sam had declared it a Maggie-only session, they were playing a video game. Mikey, Rissa, and Consuela were still at the table, working on homework, when Dean rolled in.

"Rissa?" She looked up from her— That didn't look like homework, unless homework now involved graph paper and loopy drawings. More likely another of those embroidery patterns she was always puttering with, but she was using her scarred, weaker right hand to draw it, so Dean decided to classify it as _working on her therapy_ and not _playing around_. He was awesome that way. "We need to talk to you for a minute."

She only nodded and stuffed the paper into her backpack— No, that was the stitch bag; her school bag was blue. Definitely not homework. Like his little bookworm hadn't done all her homework already, probably for the rest of the year.

Really, he didn't understand why she didn't like Sam. She was _just_ like the big geek.

" _Some_ body's in _trou_ ble," Mikey said, singsong, but Rissa, well schooled in being a big sister, didn't answer except to smack him on the back of the head as she walked by. With her _right_ hand, so that it not only wouldn't sting the scarred, numb skin, it counted towards her therapy.

The toughest part about being the parent was not laughing when they did shit like that.

He drove behind her to the dining room, where Marcy was pulling a second chair away from the table so that they could have their little conference. Rissa waited for him to get in, closed the door, then sat down, a little gingerly. Dean thought at first that maybe her leg was bothering her—her PE teacher wasn't the best about respecting her limitations, and at this point, Dean was just hoping to get through the rest of the year without having to demand _another_ conference about the idiot—but then Marcy said, "Honey, you're not in trouble."

Marcy was way better at reading Rissa than he was. It was kind of annoying.

Then again, he read Maggie better. So as far as their daughters went, they were even. They'd have to see with Ananda and Kara—

_See, hell. Ananda's Sammy's and Kara's Maggie's. We have nothing to do with it beyond providing the college funds._

Marcy got herself settled, and he parked next to her. "Here's the thing, sweetheart," she went on, tackling the topic the way she'd said she would. "We know you're not all that keen on going on vacation this year."

"I didn't say anything!" Rissa protested, clearly thinking she was here for a talking-to.

"We know that. If you _had_ , this would be an entirely different meeting. Anyway, we talked it over, and asked Marta, and we think you might not be ready for camping yet."

Rissa gave them both that special teenage _are all parents this stupid?_ look. Seriously, did that thing come with the thirteenth birthday cake? "Dad's in a _wheelchair_ and he's going."

"Little phoenix," he said gently, " _I'm_ not scared of fire. And there is going to be a _lot_ of fire involved in this. No way to hide—you'll be able to smell it even if you try not to look at it. You'd have at least one attack out there. Not maybe, definitely. Your meds are dangerous for you _here_. Outdoors—you could wander into the lake. Or onto the highway." She nodded, understanding. Mostly the meds she took for her attacks just sedated her, but sometimes she'd sleepwalk. Hyperactive toddlers weren't the only reasons they had a gate at the top of the stairs.

"So you're staying here and going to the early session of your camp instead of the late one," Marcy said.

She brightened immediately. "Really?" Most of her friends were going to the first session, and she'd been disappointed at the timing, but she hadn't complained. She hardly ever did. Even as scared of Sam as she was, she hadn't _complained_ about him being in the house. It wasn't uncommon with kids adopted out of the system, they were so afraid of being sent back, but Rissa's period of adjustment was way longer than anybody else's. Even as hostile as Johnny had initially been, he'd graduated to sarcasm and bitching within a few months. Rissa had been with them for five _years_ , adopted for three. There were little flashes, scattered moments when she was _very_ relaxed, and they _had_ been getting more common, but thinking about it, Dean wasn't sure he'd seen a single one since Christmas. That might explain the pain if her leg _was_ hurting; constant tension was not good for her damaged muscles.

Which brought him back to the uncomfortable topic at hand. "There's just one thing," he said, and a little of the brightness dulled. She knew it had to be a _big_ thing, or it wouldn't have called for a private parental conference. "You know that everybody leaves as soon as school's out. The only person who can stay here with you is your Uncle Sammy."

Her head jerked up so sharply that her carefully-maintained curtain of hair fell back from her face, exposing the burns and her blind eye. Her good eye was filled with sheer terror, the unscarred skin gone corpse-pale. Her good hand clenched into a fist, and the right hand tried, but even after years of therapy and exercises, the burned fingers still couldn't quite manage one.

Dean exchanged a glance with his wife. Sam had said something about Rissa freezing like this when she ran into him in the hall, but Sam was so awkward with the kids that they'd _both_ thought he'd simply misread Rissa's normal shyness. This....

This worried him. Sure, Sam had been a relative stranger to most of the kids when he moved in at Christmas, but that was nearly _six months_ ago. Everybody else was used to him, even if they weren't all as clingy and obsessed as Ananda. Hell, Nyssa had only been here a couple of months, and she was comfortable enough that she periodically climbed Sam like a tree. But Rissa wouldn't even talk at meals if Sam was at the table—not that she'd been a chatterbox before, but they'd at least been able to pry the occasional tidbit about school out of her. Get her going on anything involving needles and threads, and it was hard to get her to shut up. With Sam in the room, though, Dean couldn't even get her to correct him when he said "crochet" and meant "knit." Sam felt so bad about it that he hardly ever ate with the family anymore; he'd started using the wedding planning as an excuse to eat at Hannah's place, and Marcy thought that might be part of the reason why Sam was so gung-ho to move in with Hannah now instead of waiting until after the wedding.

Now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure he'd ever heard Rissa even say his brother's name—it was always _him_ , with this weird emphasis that made it plain who she meant. Maybe, once, _my uncle_ or _my father's brother_ , but he couldn't be sure of even that. She wasn't like that with her other uncles. Nick, especially, had a talent for simultaneously calming her down and bringing her out of her shell, which was really impressive for a man who still wasn't quite convinced poltergeists were real. Too bad this wasn't Nick's summer to work; Rissa could have handled staying at his place, even if it were just the two of them. Nick might not fully believe, but his house was properly warded anyway, and Dean trusted him.

"Can you handle that, sweetie?" Marcy asked. "If you can't—"

"I—" She looked down at the floor. Her good hand clenched again. "I'll manage," she whispered.

"Rissa—"

"I'll be fine," she said, louder, a little desperately. "I— Dad's right. There'll be too much smoke out there. It— I can manage," she said again.

It wasn't convincing at all, but what else were they going to do? _Force_ her to admit that she wasn't comfortable with it? And if she did, then what? Comfortable or not, they still couldn't take her camping.

If Maggie or Johnny said they could handle something, he and Marcy took them at their word, and let the kids learn from the consequences if they couldn't. They couldn't treat Rissa differently just because she was scarred. It wasn't like this was something that would endanger her. Whatever this weirdness between them was, Sam wouldn't let her get hurt.

"Isn't Sage going to the early session?" Marcy asked, and Rissa did that embarrassed little smile she did whenever her parents brought him up. "Why don't you go tell him?"

Rissa glanced sideways at Dean, and he made a show of being disgruntled. Well, when it came to Sage, he had the right to be. "If you _have_ to." Marcy made a noise that he chose to ignore. "Gimme a finger wiggle," he added.

"Finger wiggle," Rissa replied, wiggling the fingers of her burned hand at him—a little gesture they'd developed back when they were sharing PT, shortly after she came in, her trying to get the damaged fingers to work and him retraining fingers left stiff by a broken arm. Hugs had been too painful for her, with so much of her skin burned, and too awkward for him, with both legs in fixation devices and one arm in a cast, so what had been a way to check her progress with her hand exercises had become their own personal shorthand.

He wiggled his own fingers back at her. As always, it made her laugh, and then she put her chair back under the table and left, her walk much less awkward than when she'd come in.

Marcy got up, closed the door, and turned around. "Did you see that?"

He sighed inwardly, and slumped back into his chair. "I saw."

"That was a PTSD response, Dean—"

"I _know_."

"Maybe—"

"You're the one who said we couldn't take her out there." Not that he'd argued, really. He never argued with Marcy when she was right.

"If she's that scared of him— I can call around. Maybe she could stay with one of the kids going to camp—"

" _No_." They knew all Rissa's friends and their parents, but they weren't family, and _none_ of them knew what was really out there. Sam did. "Sam can handle this."

"I know he can, but can _Rissa?_ "

"She—" No, he wasn't going to say that either. His father had done the best he could, but even Dean knew that John Winchester's parenting style was not necessarily the best. And Rissa was way more fragile than Dean had ever been; God only knew how she'd take an ultimatum of _She's just gonna have to get over it._ Especially if the _it_ in question was Sam. "She's going to have to get used to him someday," he said instead. "He's not going back to New York this time. He's going to be _here_. Even after he moves out, he's going to be over here a lot, you know that." Despite the clean-up Ally had done on their records, Sam had next to no chance of finding a decent job unless he accepted one with the family, and he was too smart to do that. He'd spent the last ten years working in high-dollar art auction houses; the only ones around here were strictly family businesses, not looking to hire outsiders. One background check would reveal that he was still listed as a suspect in Jessica's death and that her case was still open. With Third paying Hannah quite the princely salary to create a home office for the Reds, not to mention what she'd be getting from her trust fund, it just made more sense for Sam to stay home and take care of the baby—which meant he'd be over here most days trying not to hyperventilate himself into his own panic attacks every time the baby moved wrong.

"I know." She sighed. "I just wish she'd _tell_ us. So we can fix it."


	2. Chapter 2

Dad had already made the nightly rounds, so Rissa, thinking to savor the treat of a Saturday night when she didn't have to get up early the next morning, had pulled out one of the books Aunt Kim had loaned her on the sly and was reading it when there was a knock. "Hey, baby girl," Mom said, poking her head in. "All packed? Mosquito spray?"

She managed not to groan. " _Mom._ "

"Yeah, your dad said you wouldn't see the humor in that," Mom said, misunderstanding. "Got all your threads and needles organized, then?" She slipped in, closing the door behind her, and came over and sat down on edge of the bed. Rissa slid over an inch or so to make sure she had room. "It's not too late. You can still go with us." Mom grinned. "I _think_ we still have a couple of inches on top of the van. I swear, your dad and his insistence on being prepared for _everything_ , like we're going to need four fire extinguishers and _three_ cans of salt, and do _not_ get me started on his plans for Anasazi glyphs around the campsite."

"No thanks." Rissa hesitated, then asked, "Mom, does it have to be _him?_ "

"Sweetheart—" Mom sighed, and pushed her hair behind one ear. "I know you'd rather stay with Hannah, but Sam's going to be over there just as much as he is here, and Hannah's got a new job to straighten out."

"She works for _Grandpa_."

"Just because she's related to him doesn't mean he can't be a mean boss. Trust me on that one." 

Rissa wasn't young enough to believe that. Everybody knew Grandpa spent more time on the golf course than in his office. "Uh-huh."

"It's a new position. She has to create the whole thing from scratch, and it all needs to be done before the wedding. She has a better chance of doing that while Grandpa's not breathing down her neck."

"I guess."

"Just give him a chance, okay? I promise, he's not going to hurt you."

Rissa managed not to roll her eyes. "Mom, _you_ don't like him."

That seemed to catch Mom by surprise. Like it was that hard to figure out. He and Mom spent less time in the same room than _she_ and he did. Mom just got to blame hers on work. "Rissa, hon, it— Sam and I have some bad history, that's all. It's not that I don't _like_ him, he just did some things when your dad and I got married that—that haven't been easy to get past. But he would _not_ be in this house if he was a danger to you—any of you. I wouldn't allow it. Neither would your dad. And I sure as hell wouldn't let my baby sister _marry_ him."

"Why doesn't Dad make him apologize?" She knew her mother. If it were just stupidity, or a clash of personalities, an apology would set it right. At least on Mom's end.

Mom sighed. "When we have a couple of months free, my little phoenix, I will _attempt_ to explain to you the tangled, twisted mess that is the relationship between your father and uncle. But the short story is that of all the kids your dad's raised, he's great with you guys, but he has _never_ been able to discipline Sam, and that came out with a completely different mental image than I expected." Rissa just looked blankly at her. "In a few years, you'll remember this conversation and wince, baby girl."

" _Dad_ raised him?"

"They had a—rough childhood. Nothing like mine. Nothing like yours, even. They— It was a complicated situation, but pretty much it was just them. That led to—weirdness."

Weirdness? "Is that why nobody talks about our grandparents on his side?" They were dead, she knew that much, they'd died before Dad ever met Mom—but she also knew, if their parents didn't, that Maggie pulled new arrivals aside and told them flat-out not to ask about Dad's family. Dad made sure the kids remembered their birth families, but he never, ever mentioned his, beyond... _him_. 

"That's exactly why, smart girl. Of course, you _could_ ask your uncle—" Rissa made a face, and Mom chuckled, but then was serious again. "Are you really _that_ scared of him, sweetheart?" Rissa nodded, and Mom thought a moment, nibbling at her lower lip. "Tell you what. Just for this, because we won't be here and everybody's out of town, I'll issue a general exception. _If_ Sam does anything that is remotely threatening, you can lock your door against him. But you call Hannah _immediately_ , no matter what time it is, and you let _her_ handle it. How's that sound?"

"Dad won't let—"

"This is _only_ if you get scared of Sam. Not for nightmares. And not just because. I expect you to be as civil as you would be with any other adult, okay?"

It wasn't much, but it was more than she had hoped for. Not that a lock would stop him. "Okay."

"Now, put up that b— _Spangle?_ Who let you have that?"

Dammit. She should have shoved it under the covers as soon as Mom came in. "Aunt Kim."

"Remind me to smack the sh— Um, remind me to smack her when she comes back from Michigan. You are way too young to be reading Gary Jennings."

"Dad said—"

"Your dad hasn't read it." She sighed. "Where's the others?"

"Others?" Rissa asked innocently.

" _Aztec_ , _The Journeyer_ , and _Raptor_. I know your aunt's collection, Rissa. I had to go through this with her and Maggie."

Rissa sighed. She'd been hoping to have them to read while everybody was gone. She had to do _something_ when her hands started cramping up from the stitching. "Desk. Bottom drawer."

"Oh, playing the sneak, are we?"

"Aunt Kim said I had to."

Mom muttered something that she was _definitely_ not supposed to say in front of kids. "Why she _insists_ on doing this to me— I'll let you finish that one, but only because I know how much of a pain it is to stop a book halfway through. And I am going to _kill_ that woman. C'mon, now, bedtime." She took the book out of Rissa's hands, ending any argument, and set it on the nightstand.

"Can't I stay up late?"

"Consider it your punishment for going along with Aunt Kim's scheming," Mom said dryly. "Besides, you've got to get up early to wave goodbye to everybody. You can nap if you need it."

"Oh, ick," Rissa grumbled. She _hated_ naps.

Mom just laughed and tucked her in and gave her a kiss. "Well, nap, knit a scarf, whatever makes you feel rested. Sleep well, little phoenix. Love you."

"Love you too." 

Mom got the rest of Aunt Kim's books out of the desk, but stopped at the door, one hand on the light switch. "You know, sweetie, some day you're going to have to let us know _why_ you're scared of him."

The words were gentle, not condemning at all, and Mom turned the lights off and closed the door right after she said them, but it wasn't enough to stop the surge of sheer _terror_ that swamped Rissa. The room contracted around her, the air went hot and thick with remembered smoke, and she felt her lungs fighting to breathe. Pain danced up the scars on her arm and leg, stabbed into her bad eye. Fire flickered around her.

_No_ , she thought desperately, trying to hold onto reality by sheer stubbornness and the tips of her mental fingers. Her meds were in the drawer, within easy reach, but she hated them, hated the way they slowed everything down. If she could just—

Her lungs finally expanded, and the world went properly dark and cool again, allowing her eyes to adjust and see the familiar confines of her room, rather than a tangle of remembered debris. 

This time, she'd won. Her arm ached from the spasming of the damaged muscles, and it would probably hurt all day tomorrow, but she could handle that. She'd stay up here and rest, like Mom said. There was no reason she should have to interact with _him_ before Monday, unless he tried to force the issue, and he hadn't tried force so far.

But tomorrow, there wouldn't be anybody to stop him.

Rissa reached for Beowulf and clutched him tight. Usually, the octopus ruled her room from a perch on the headboard. She didn't usually _need_ to cling to him, not any more, not even after attacks. Especially not at night. 

The darkness was safe. Darkness was _always_ safe. Nothing could sneak up on her in the dark. And Mom and Dad let her have that safety without questioning it. Not like some of the families she'd been with.

But they didn't understand. They couldn't _see_. 

Fire was dangerous. Fire had _always_ been the danger. Fire had taken everything from her, over and over again.

And fire surrounded _him_.

***

Marcy had carted everybody who was so inclined to the Saturday vigil Mass so that they could leave early on Sunday morning, and after an amount of chaos that was staggering even for this house—complete with an accidental black eye and possible sprained finger after Kara collided with Mikey, and Sam hoped this much-ballyhooed campground had a decent medical clinic—they were gone, leaving the house actually quiet for the first time since Sam had moved in. He hadn't realized how much noise the brats generated just by being awake, not to mention the noise once they got going.

Rissa retreated to her room as soon as her parents and siblings were gone, without a word. Sam suspected that was going to be the norm during this little vacation. 

But she was twelve. Maybe even thirteen; he'd have to check his calendar to be sure. Unlike the Trio, she didn't need somebody to entertain her 24/7. He was just here to make sure she got fed, got to camp and back, and didn't get in trouble. Hell, when he was twelve? He would have _killed_ for this kind of break from Dad and Dean.

Sam sighed, and went back into his room. Somewhere in here, there was a bed, not that you could see it for the damn boxes. 

Moving in with Hannah was not supposed to be this kind of production. He didn't _own_ that much, after all, and most of it fit in the Impala with plenty of room left over for Maggie, Kevin, and Johnny. He'd acquired some extra things in the past six months—his own television, since there hadn't been one in here, some linens, and extra pillows so that when Ananda stole his he still had one—but he didn't even have enough stuff to fill one side of his closet. Packing should have taken a couple of hours, _at most_ , and that only if he stopped for lunch or the Terrible Trio decided to "help." 

Then, two weeks ago, UPS had dropped off seventeen massive packing boxes stuffed to the brim with assorted junk, all neatly addressed to him, from Lisa.

He'd called immediately. She'd been thinking about moving back to California since before they split, and had finally gotten a job that let her. "It's the shit you left," she told him.

As if Sam had _ever_ owned seventeen _boxes_ of stuff, even at Stanford, even _before_ the fire. 

No, the boxes were full of shit left behind from _other_ boyfriends and—if the smell of mothballs and denture cream meant anything—things she'd cleaned out of her grandmother's house. The only thing Sam had found that could even remotely be considered "his" was a gris-gris left over from when he warded the house. Most of this crap—and it _was_ crap—was from the piles of "to be donated" stuff that she'd never gotten around to carting off. He was the one who'd been doing that, a box at a time on the weekends, trying to clean out the spare room so he could have a home office, which was the only reason he could think of for her to associate any of this with him.

He would've sent it straight back to her, except she had—very wisely—not given him her forwarding address, and UPS wouldn't accept a "return to sender" on a shipment this size. She'd also made a point of telling him there were already new people living in her house. She knew he wouldn't inflict this junk on unsuspecting strangers. And she knew he wouldn't just toss any of this stuff, either, that he'd insist on going through and sorting out recyclables and possible valuables that might have accidentally gotten left in there.

Not that he was going to let her know if he did. Pawn it, maybe. He should get _something_ for his trouble.

Still, it left him with a room that was rapidly starting to smell like a decaying nursing home, no room to get anywhere except from his bed to the bathroom and hardly room to get out—the door to the garage was blocked by a stack three high—and three eager little helpers who had damned near gotten way more of an education than anybody wanted when it turned out that the box of antique toys they were gleefully ripping apart also held a stash of horrifically bad porn, courtesy of Gabe, three boyfriends before Sam.

Hannah thought it was hilarious. The traitor. 

Sam was going to have a bonfire to make sure none of that stuff came back to haunt him. He was kind of insulted that Lisa thought that was _his_. Even Dean had higher standards than Gabe.

And just in case there was more porn—or worse—in this mess, he really needed to get it done before the Reynolds-Winchester Roadshow returned.

He worked for a couple of hours, until his stomach started protesting, then went to find lunch. By the looks of what had been an unopened loaf of bread, Rissa had slipped down and made lunch for herself already. He hadn't expected to be notified, but he was surprised that he hadn't heard her. Maybe it was possible for one of Dean's kids to do things quietly after all.

Sam fixed himself a sandwich, then decided to indulge himself: a beer and an R-rated movie on the big TV in the living room while it was still daylight, with the added bonus of getting to sprawl all over the couch without anybody climbing on him or protesting that he was taking up too much space. It wasn't _pure_ laziness, though; he had the paperwork Dean and Marcy had left to go through, to make sure he had the right directions to campus and things for camp registration in the morning, plus Rissa's file. He'd glanced over it briefly when Dean had first handed it over, but then everybody had gotten caught up in the madness of the end of the school year and trip planning and the boxes had arrived, and the file had been left on his nightstand gathering dust.

It was uncomfortable reading. Unlike Hannah, who attracted any poltergeist that floated by, Rissa had been the favored target of a single, very determined poltergeist, and a rare fire poltergeist at that. There was more fire in her history than there was in his. It had killed her parents when she was two, burned her out of half a dozen foster homes before she was seven, and at seven, one of those fires had seared the right side of her body, leaving her heavily scarred and blind in that eye.

That was when Bill had brought in Dean and Marcy. By that point, it hadn't been just about getting rid of the poltergeist; it had been about saving a little girl, not just from the supernatural, but from what appeared to be a death wish. She'd gotten hurt when she ran back _into_ the burning house.

There was a giant lavender Post-It on that page, with block printing he recognized as Dean's: _THOUGHT SOMEBODY WAS LEFT._

Good God. She'd gone back in because she thought somebody had been left inside. That—

That was something Dean would do.

But at _seven?_ Even Dean wouldn't—

_The hell he wouldn't. He never did have any sense when he thought Dad or I was in trouble._

Sam hadn't known any of this before now. Dean had undoubtedly mentioned it, and Sam had filed away "burned" somewhere in his mind, at least enough that he hadn't been terribly shocked at seeing Rissa's scars, but ever since they started taking in kids, even on his best days, Sam had tended to zone out when Dean started talking about them, and if he was estimating the timeline right, those had _not_ been his best days. The scheduling at work and home for those first couple of years of Rissa's stay had been abysmal—two moves, a job change, dealing with Renee—so Sam's visits had been rushed at best. Rissa's penchant for hiding meant he didn't remember meeting her, not at Christmas, not when he came down to help after Dean damn near killed himself in that wreck, not even at her adoption party. Had he even gotten down here for that? He didn't remember. He usually did, but it had been so crazy....

He stopped and checked the kiddie cheat sheet he kept on his phone. The only things he had for Rissa were her birthday and three store names—Michael's, AC Moore, and a website called ABCstitch. The list was even updated through this past Christmas. Apparently, he'd never bought her an actual present, just gift cards. Clearly the _right_ gift cards, or he would've heard about it from Dean, but no presents at all, and that was just weird. She'd been what, eight when she got out of the hospital and came to live here? Surely she hadn't been so into yarn and thread _then_. She must have wanted books or toys or—or _something_. A lot of kids arrived here too old for their age, but that quickly got countered by Dean's perpetual inner child. Was Rissa just more resistant? Had she just been through too much to regress that far?

Or was it something else entirely, like being an introvert in an asylum of extroverts? Rissa faded into the background—probably intentionally, given the scarring. Considering the way Dean and Marcy tended to cure shyness, Sam hated to think what Rissa had been like when she first got here. He wondered how she handled her cousins, or the kids at school. Would Hannah know? Hannah hadn't been here, either, but at some point, she and Rissa had apparently bonded. Maybe Hannah had just been smart enough to visit at times other than Christmas.

Nothing in the file, though, explained why she froze in terror at the sight of him, why she'd stared at him like he was the monster from her worst nightmare, why she wouldn't even call him by _name_. If there had been mistreatment in any of her previous foster homes, it hadn't been bad enough to get noticed or reported. The only reason she'd been taken out of any of them was because her foster parents couldn't keep _any_ kids after the house burned down.

The movie ended, and Sam closed the folder. No answers. Not that he'd really expected any, but.... He'd hoped. Hostility, he could handle, but fear? How was he supposed to handle a little girl who was so blatantly _terrified_ of him? 

Dean was right. He wasn't licensed for this.

***

The woman handling the R-Z table at registration must have met Rissa before, because she didn't react at all to Rissa's scars or bad eye. Sam had learned a few things about how people reacted to facial scars since he acquired his, and _nobody_ took it that well the first time around.

"Rissa Winchester—here you are." The woman handed Rissa a nametag and a folder. "Your schedule's in there. Now go make some friends." She waited until Rissa had gotten out of hearing, then said, in a _much_ sharper voice, "You're not Mr. Winchester."

Oh, yeah. She had definitely met them. "Actually, I am. I'm Sam. Dean's brother." He handed her the paperwork Dean had given him—legalese that Ally had drawn up so that the camp wouldn't bitch about dealing with him if anything happened. He had several copies in case he had to take Rissa to the hospital or a doctor. "Dean and Marcy are out of town for the next couple of weeks, so I'm looking after Rissa until they get back."

She gave him a skeptical look, and he was pretty sure she read _everything_ on that paper, down to the fine print. "Here, then. Give us your contact information." She shoved a clipboard at him so he could scrawl his numbers. "Will they be back before the end of camp?"

"I think so," he said. Truth was, he wasn't sure; the dates for both trip and camp were on the big family calendar on the wall outside the playrooms, but he hadn't paid much attention to anything but the start dates. It wasn't like he'd be able to miss their return. No group of people that noisy could _sneak_.

She gave him another frosty look, and handed him a thick folder of information. "Well, I hope so. It would be awful if her parents missed the showcase."

_Showcase?_ Sam opened his mouth to ask, but another kid pushed up beside him to register, and the lady turned her attention to her, so he tucked it away to ask about later and turned away, looking for his niece.

Rissa was in a knot of other kids—girls mostly, and one boy on crutches who had a backpack trailing what looked like a half-finished scarf. By the way she was talking to them, animated and smiling like he'd never seen, she knew them. Dean had said something about other friends going to the first session, so maybe those were the friends in question. She wasn't as careful about keeping her hair over the burned side of her face with them. 

At least she _had_ friends. He'd been afraid that she didn't. Kids were mean about differences. He'd caught hell for his thrift store wardrobe, especially once he started growing out of it every six weeks; he didn't want to _think_ what that kind of brat would do to a kid as scarred as Rissa. She might have it a little easier, not being a nomad and perpetual new kid, but undoubtedly a few classmates remembered that she'd been a foster kid, and that carried its own kind of stigma. So might being adopted. He remembered getting a pretty good amount of hell for not having a mother. He'd only been in school the week before Mother's Day once, and after that, he'd _never_ complained when Dad dragged them out of school a month early, even if it did mean missing the chance at birthday-kid perks.

With one of the other kids, he would have waited, would have caught her eye and given her a little wave to let her know he was leaving. Rissa, though.... She not only wouldn't _care_ , he wasn't entirely sure she hadn't already put him out of her mind for the day. 

A gaggle of older kids walked by Rissa and her friends—and two of them stopped and _stared_ at Rissa. One opened her mouth to say something, but the kid on crutches snapped something that sounded rude, and the two older kids quickly chased after their friends.

Why did people always act like there was something _shameful_ about scars? It had never made any sense to him, even before he'd acquired one that couldn't be hidden. Nobody got through life without a few scars, after all—

Was that it? Was it his scar that spooked her? It had faded over the years, but it was still obvious—it always would be, though at least it wasn't purple anymore, and Sam had reached a point where he hardly even noticed it in the mirror. It _shouldn't_ be the problem, since scars were nothing in the Winchester house. Dean not only had the scars he'd picked up while hunting, but his legs were now criss-crossed with scars from various surgeries to repair broken bones. Marcy had her own collection of surgical scars, Maggie had vampire bites on her neck, Kara had stabbed herself in the leg playing psychic-fetch with a butcher knife before she was old enough to know better. And that wasn't even counting the _normal_ scars, like the accidental brands Johnny and Kevin had from an ill-conceived science experiment or the permanent dark marks on Mikey's arm from upholstery-burn in the car crash that had killed his birth parents. 

But if there was one thing Sam had learned over the last decade, it was that even the most accepting people looked twice at facial scars, like they were some kind of indication of a spiritual defect. The thin line across his face was nowhere near as bad as Rissa's burns, but it was still something that should have been a bond between them, the way the poltergeists were between Rissa and Hannah. If anybody else could understand what it was like.... 

Maybe it reminded her of something? Somebody in her pre-Winchester life? Or she associated it with something terrible? If that were the case....

Sam couldn't hide his scar any more than she could hide hers, but if that was the root cause of Rissa's fear, he could work with it. He just had to think on it.

He flipped through the packet as he walked back to the Impala. As usual with the kids' activities, Dean had understated the case. (He'd referred to Johnny and Kevin's state-championship soccer game as "the season finale" and said it was "a couple of towns over," which happened to be a four-hour drive.) This wasn't a _camp_ , per se; this was a high-intensity month-long art course for teens. Not the traditional "high art" of museums, like painting and sculpture, but crafts taken to the artistic level, well beyond what you found in hobby store classes. Rissa was in the fiber arts track (not to be confused with sewing or costuming), and from the looks of this schedule, she'd be learning about everything from embroidery to weaving. The list of planned projects was a page long, the lecture and demonstration schedule took up two, and there were field trips on Saturdays. 

They were off on Sundays, though; that meant he'd have to figure out three meals that day. Normally, there would be the family dinner at Third and Anne's place, but with everybody gone, that was off the calendar. He'd have to remember to keep up the milk supply, because what was in the fridge wouldn't last that long. And check the cereal and sandwich supplies. Maybe he could get Rissa into a grocery store to pick out some things. She wouldn't have to _talk_ to him for that, he could just give her a basket—or a cart, maybe, he didn't know if she could handle a basket with that bad arm—let her roam the store for her own goodies, and meet him at the register.

This was a freakin' nightmare.

_Welcome to daddyhood_ , he heard Dean say in the back of his head, _see where you'll be in thirteen years?_

"Oh, shut up," Sam muttered as he slid behind the wheel.

***

People were funneling from the registration tables towards the auditorium. Rissa lagged back to avoid more stares from strangers, and to keep Sage company. It had been two weeks, and he was still having trouble with his crutches. No wonder his ankle wasn't healed. He was going to wind up having surgery on it yet. "Who was that?" he asked, edging around a massive potted plant.

"Who?"

"The giant who dropped you off, Risible." Sage tried to poke her, but nearly lost his grip on one crutch, got his half-finished Fourth Doctor scarf tangled around the other one, and would have gone down if she hadn't caught him.

"You're a menace, Sagebrush," Rissa scolded, getting him straightened out and upright. "Stand still a minute." She rolled the trailing scarf up and stuffed it into his backpack.

"So? Who is he?"

She sighed. "My father's brother. He lives with us now."

Sage gave her a look. "You sound like my mom talking about _her_ uncle, and he _molested_ her."

"It's nothing like that!"

"Good, 'cause I can take him." That was so ridiculous—Sage was shorter than _she_ was and skinny, not to mention the broken ankle—that she laughed. " _Hey!_ "

"Sorry," she said, but still grinning. Sage could always make her laugh. "You know my dad would kill anybody who even _thought_ about hurting us."

Sage considered. "Is he as scary as your dad?"

"Dad's not scary!" 

Sage snorted. "Obviously he's never pulled a knife on _you_."

"He worries!" Sage just looked at her. "Not to anybody else," she admitted. "Everybody else loves him. Move it, or we're not going to get good seats."

"We don't need good seats. It's a speech, not a movie." He took a hesitant step. "Is it the scar?" he asked. "It's kinda scary-looking. Not like yours."

Rissa could feel the blood rushing to the unmarked side of her face, and she quickly looked down, so her hair fell and hid it. Sage was the only person besides her parents who had never even blinked at her scars. "No. He just—" She hesitated, but Sage knew, and nobody was close enough to hear. "There's fire around him," she whispered.

"Did you tell—"

"No! They can't know!"

Sage stopped, right in the middle of traffic, and gave her the full force of his best glare. "Seriously, Rissa? All the shit you've told me about in your family, and _this_ makes you freeze up? You have no sense at _all_."

"Oh, go knit a tea cozy."

"It's on the to-do list." She held the door open for him. "You're stuck with him while they're on vacation, aren't you?"

"Yep."

"What about your aunt? The fun one? Isn't she living here now?"

"She's _marrying_ him." Rissa still didn't understand that. Aunt Hannah was all laughter and sunshine, as fiercely protective as Dad, and perfectly safe. Rissa had no idea what she saw in someone as dangerous as _him_. And adults said _teenagers_ were hard to figure out. "Mom said even if Aunt Hannah had the time, I'd still see him just as much, because they've got a wedding to straighten out by October."

"October? And he just moved in at Christmas?" Sage frowned. "Are you getting a cousin?"

Rissa froze. "Oh, God. You don't think— That— _Ew!_ "

"That's what grown-ups do, you know."

"I know, but— Aunt Hannah? _With him?_ "

Sage's eyes widened. "Damn. I've never heard you _screech_ before."

"Move it before I stab you with one of your own knitting needles."

"Use the plastic ones, please, so that my grandma didn't spend the five bucks needlessly."

She laughed. "You think I can get a plastic knitting needle between your ribs?" Two older kids and an adult jerked around to stare at them as they entered the auditorium.

"Risible, I've met your dad. I think he teaches you guys to stab anyone with anything if necessary." There was no arguing with that, especially since he was right. "Let's just sit here. If I try to get down these steps—"

"You'll break your neck." She claimed two seats on the end of the back row—and then caught him before he managed to whack three people in the head with the crutches. "Maybe I should bring you one of my dad's old chairs."

"Might be easier," Sage admitted, and managed to get himself lowered into the seat, his injured leg sticking out into the aisle. Rissa stashed the crutches in the empty seat on her other side just as Mrs. Stapper stepped up to the podium.

She barely heard any of the welcome speeches, though, her mind caught on something Sage had said.

Was that why Hannah was marrying him? Because of a baby? Had she actually—

_Oh, God. I think I'm going to be sick._

***

They quickly fell into a routine.

The camp supplied breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack, so at least he didn't have to worry about feeding anybody first thing in the morning, just making sure they were at campus by 7:30. Sam dropped Rissa off after a painfully silent drive, went back to the house to work on the boxes or nap or run errands, had lunch with Hannah if she didn't have a meeting, spent the afternoon swearing at the boxes some more, and was back at campus to pick Rissa up at six for another silent, awkward drive.

Dinner was the hard part. He couldn't really cook—at least, nothing fit for a growing kid; he somehow doubted Dean and Marcy would appreciate him feeding their daughter canned soup or Chef Boyardee every night, especially considering the sheer amount of money they'd left as a meal fund. Rissa, unlike any other kid her age, wouldn't give him a single suggestion, wouldn't even take advantage of the opportunity to get pizza at every meal. She wouldn't even tell him what she liked on her pizza. If she had, he would've felt a lot more guilty and a lot less pissed at the silent, dramatic removal of the peppers and onions from each slice.

Conversation during meals was out of the question, of course, just like during the drives. The two of them sat at the kitchen table, since it didn't make sense to mess up the dining room for two, eating the night's takeout, and he tried to get a conversation going and she just ate and cleared her plate and vanished into her room, presumably to work on her "homework"—some of those projects were apparently take-home. He'd hear one of the upstairs showers running later, and when he went to bed in his borrowed bedroom across the hall from hers (he'd agreed to sleep upstairs just in case she had one of her nightmares, because he wouldn't hear it downstairs, and besides, it didn't smell like mothballs), there would be no lights under her door.

And so it went, every day, like clockwork, until Saturday evening. 

They were back to pizza again—plain pepperoni this time, he'd learned his lesson—but Rissa didn't immediately disappear after dumping her paper plate into the recycling bin. She stood near the door for a few minutes, looking uneasy. "Something wrong?" Sam finally asked.

"Tomorrow's Sunday."

"Yes, it is." Why was she—

"Are you supposed to take me to Mass?"

_Mass?_ That hadn't even occurred to him. Dean hadn't mentioned it, of course, because Dean just didn't think about that kind of thing, and Marcy— Well. "I can, if you want," he said finally.

Sam should have thought of this earlier, but not all the kids were Catholic. Johnny and Maggie were—Johnny's early placements had been with Catholic families because he was Vietnamese and that was as close to a same-culture placement as the system had been able to manage, and Maggie had chosen to convert after they adopted her—but Kevin had even more contempt for religion than Dean, and Mikey only seemed to go to Mass when he felt like it. Kara and Ananda had both been baptized as part of their adoptions, but they were also a _lot_ younger than Dean and Marcy usually adopted. As for the fosters, the local demographics meant that most of them were Protestant, and the things they'd been through meant that a lot of them, especially the older ones, were as skeptical about religion as Dean.

"Would you like to ask Hannah instead?" he asked, and tried very hard not to be hurt at the sheer relief in her good eye. "If she's not going, I'll take you." Hannah didn't go every Sunday, despite the obligation, but for Rissa, she might, if she didn't have other plans. Sam— Well, unlike Dean, he had no particular objections to sitting in a church for an hour or so. If Rissa was a believer—and it seemed she was—this came under the heading of "taking care of her." It wasn't like she could drive herself, and even if she knew somebody else she could call for a ride, Dean would kill him if Sam let her go off with them.

She went off, probably to use the landline in the hall upstairs; Dean and Marcy were kind of strict about the kids using cell phones at home, and Rissa wasn't one for flouting the rules. He sat there, picking at his pizza, for ten minutes, until _his_ cell rang. Hannah, exactly when he'd expected.

"Sam, Rissa just called me—"

"About Mass tomorrow, I know. You going?"

"I told her I'd take her. You're not?"

He hesitated. "I will if I have to, but I think it might be better if she had a different chauffeur for one day, at least."

"Still not going well?"

"She hasn't come out and _told_ me she hates my guts, so that's something. I thought maybe you two could go out to lunch or a late breakfast. A little treat for her while the family's gone."

"And maybe over pancakes I can kinda sorta figure out what the hell bugs her so much about you?" Hannah asked dryly.

He did _not_ breathe a sigh of relief. "You said it, I didn't."

"Don't hold your breath, Sam, but— I'll try."

"That's all I ask."

***

_What did I ever see in this woman?_ Sam thought, tossing another magazine towards the recycle box, using a spark of telekinesis to make sure it landed inside and didn't fall out.

Box #13 was proving to be mainly magazines. No wonder the poor UPS guy had had trouble lifting it. Lisa must have hired people for every other move. Anybody who'd ever had to do their own lifting would know better than to pack a box this size with reading material.

He reached in for another stack of magazines. Renee she wasn't, but Sam was feeling much better about his breakup with Lisa, and not just because it had led, no matter how indirectly, to him meeting Hannah. Re-meeting. Whatever. 

"Our kid's not going to be a teenager, right?"

Sam glanced up. Hannah was standing in the doorway, looking exhausted. "Well, she won't be at first," he finally said, not really sure how to take that question. "I don't think we can stop it from happening eventually, though."

She threaded her way into his room, wrinkling her nose. "You know, Sam, I try not to judge, but your last girlfriend smells like a little old lady."

"It's not her stuff, it's the stuff she got out of her grandmother's house— Hey! You're wrecking my system!"

Hannah shot him a sour look. "Sam, just _trash_ all this crap already." She shoved a stack of fishing magazines (Doug, somewhere between him and Gabe) off Sam's pillow so she could recline on it. "Even if some of this stuff is valuable, trust me, it's _not_ the six years of _Bassmasters_."

"I'm _trying_ to make sure she didn't stick somebody's birth certificate or passport or the deed to the Louisiana Purchase in here with them," he said. "I had to rent a PO box to keep her from misplacing my bills. I don't want to donate or trash these things and find out I've aided in identity theft."

"You are way too nice, Sam."

"So I keep hearing."

"One of us should be, I guess. What do you want me to do?" He raised an eyebrow. "What? The quicker you get through this, the quicker you move, the quicker I'm the only girl you find in bed with you in the morning."

He chuckled. "Work on the fishing stuff, if you want. Look out for fishhooks."

"Are you—" He held up a bandaged finger. "Jesus. There was something wrong with that woman."

"I hear that a lot about the women I date."

"Mm— _Hey!_ " He ducked the pillow she threw at him, laughing, but she settled back down to flip through the fishing magazines.

"So, why are we wishing perpetual childhood on our offspring before she's even old enough for a sonogram?" he asked. Fishing, gardening, more fishing, hunting, crocheting— "Does Rissa like crochet?"

"If it involves needles and threads, she's into it."

"It's not really a needle, and it's yarn—"

"Yarn is just a kind of thread. Crochet's the one with just the one needle, right?"

"Why are you asking me?" He flipped through the magazine, found a picture. "Um, it looks like this."

She squinted at it. "Yeah, I think that's crochet. Knitting has two and they're pointy, I remember that much. Are you going to try turning crochet magazines into a peace offering?"

"No. I just thought she might be interested."

"Sam, you can't buy—"

"I'm not trying to, honestly! I just don't know anybody else who'd want this kind of stuff! What am I going to do, give them to Dean for Christmas?"

Hannah snorted. "I'd pay money to see that." She leaned back against the headboard, flipping through another issue. "I think she's more into knitting, but you could offer." She sighed. "I didn't get anywhere, by the way. Every time I brought it up, she clammed up. You know, the way teenagers get when they think something's obvious and the grown-ups are being intentionally dense. I'd really like to avoid that with ours."

Sam chose not to make any observations on the likelihood of a peaceful adolescence with a child who had both Reynolds _and_ Winchester DNA. "So this is something we're all supposed to magically know."

"Maybe." _Swish_ went a magazine. "She's scared of you."

Sam rolled his eyes. "I _knew_ that."

"No, I mean she's scared of _you_. Not because you're a stranger or because you're a giant or because you've got a scar. She's afraid of you _because_ you're you, if that makes any sense. Recycle box?" He pointed, and she dumped a stack of magazines into it. "I'm not really sure if it's _can't_ or _won't_ , but either way, she's not articulating _why_ she's scared of you. If I didn't know better, I'd say she was scared to tell me why she's scared of you."

"Would she be?"

"She shouldn't. She knows she can tell me anything. And if she can't tell me, she can tell Dean and Marcy." Another magazine went flying. "Is there anything in here besides fishing, hunting, and knitting?"

"The porn's already been tossed." He glanced up in time to see a decidedly unhappy expression cross his fiancée's face, and he smiled. "Feel free to open up a box and start spelunking."

She eyed #14, #5, and #8, which were the three blocking the door to the garage. "Are they _all_ magazines?"

"Most of them haven't been. A few here or there, but not as solidly packed. The porn was in with Lisa's sister's Strawberry Shortcake collection." 

"I begin to see why this relationship didn't work out." Hannah unfolded herself and went to examine the stack. "Hey, I can lift this one."

"Lucky you. There's a box cutter on the nightstand."

Hannah lugged the box over to the bed and sliced through the packing tape. Lisa had gotten a little tape-happy, undoubtedly to lessen the risk that any of the boxes would get sent back to her. "Oooh."

Sam winced. That was _not_ a sound you wanted to hear out of a Reynolds.


	3. Chapter 3

The Tuesday afternoon wedding panic was not going well.

Sam was starting to have second thoughts. Not about Hannah—he was sure about her, in a way he hadn't been about anybody since Jess, not even Sarah—but about the wedding. This was the twenty-first century; there wasn't any _real_ reason why they had to get married before the baby arrived, and waiting until next summer meant they would be able to take their time with the planning, rather than this mad rush to get all the ducks lined up. It wasn't like Third and Anne had threatened him with a shotgun. Anne was actually on _his_ side on the topic. No, this was all Hannah's hang-up, and no matter what he tried, he couldn't get her to change her mind.

And the stress.... Hannah was a lot like Dean pre-Marcy: she communicated mainly through sarcasm, innuendo, and bad jokes. Under stress, that sarcasm became knife-sharp, and her temper, already short, became worse. Mix in pregnancy hormones and a fiancé who had no idea how to handle wedding prep _or_ large, nosy families....

Sam was trying very hard to be a supportive fiancé and steady voice of reason, but right now, reason just kinda...bounced. 

Sam stifled a sigh and looked up at the pictures that decorated the hall. He'd been here when he answered his phone, and Hannah had the most unnerving knack of knowing when he was trying to do two things at once, so he'd just sat down until the call was over. Images of Dean and Marcy's wedding stared back at him.

Dean and Marcy had done this. Not with a baby on the way, true, but they'd put together a wedding in _less_ time. If Dean could do it, Sam could.

"You know, this would be easier if you'd put some input into this," Hannah snapped.

How the hell _had_ Dean and Marcy done this? She'd gotten Dean into a _church wedding_ , for Christ's sake. _Dean!_

"I _gave_ you my idea," he replied evenly. "We could surprise everybody when they get ba—"

"Reynoldses do not elope."

The opening was too good to resist. "Marcy did." Sure, that had been her first marriage, and the guy was an ass, and it had imploded rather spectacularly from everything Sam had put together, but the fact remained: Marcy had eloped. Precedent was important to the Reynoldses. Sam had learned that much.

"Yeah, and we all saw how well _that_ one worked out. I want this to _stick_ , Sam. Like Marcy and Dean."

He rubbed his temples, silently wishing for a drink. "You know, I don't think the one actually has anything to do with the other." 

" _Sam_."

"I don't _have_ any ideas. I told you. I don't know about this kind of thing."

"You've been engaged _three times_ —"

"They never got to this point." Probably just as well, because Renee would have turned into a bridezilla of epic proportions, given that personality about-face she'd suffered after they were official. "We never even got around to setting a date."

"None of them?"

"None of them. I swear to God, Hannah, you're my only wedding. First and last." 

She sighed. "Fine. But if you wind up in a pink tux, I don't want to hear a _word_."

He snorted. "If you pick pink tuxes, it's not _me_ you're going to have to worry about. _Dean_ will skin you alive."

"Oh, come _on_." There was less stress and more humor in her voice now. Good. "Dean _likes_ me."

"I'm not sure he'd wear pink for _Marcy_ , and remember, he actually knows _how_ to skin—" His phone beeped. "Hang on." He didn't recognize the number, but the caller ID said "Continuing Ed," and Rissa's camp _was_ at a college. "I think the camp's calling me. I'll try to make a decision. Other than to keep the pastels away from the tuxes."

She laughed. "You better."

He chuckled and hung up on her so that he could answer the second call. "Sam Winchester."

"Is this Rissa's uncle?"

"Yes—"

"Oh, good. This is Mrs. Stapper, I'm the camp coordinator— I'm sorry, Mr. Winchester, but we need you to come and get Rissa."

He glanced at his watch. Barely three-thirty. "Now?" he asked, pushing himself up off the floor. "Is she all right?" 

"She had a—a panic attack, I think. During this afternoon's demonstration." Her voice shook a bit as she told him which building she was in and where to park. Whatever had happened, she had not been prepared for it, even after all Dean's warnings. "Please hurry."

***

Mrs. Stapper turned out to be the lady from registration, and she was anxiously waiting for him in the lobby of one of the main office buildings. "Where is she?" he demanded.

"She's resting in my office. She said she needed it dark and quiet, so I thought I'd meet you here and discuss it first."

"What happened?" 

Mrs. Stapper looked uncomfortable. "We have demonstrations after lunch, before they settle down into the afternoon workshop. Usually science-type things, or things too complicated or dangerous for us to teach them, just so the kids can get a look at it. Today, the fiber and fabric kids had a museum expert showing them a burn test—"

"A _burn test?_ " Christ, couldn't the woman figure out that a kid as fire-traumatized as Rissa didn't need to be exposed to _anything_ called a burn test? He knew Dean and Marcy had warned them, he'd seen the paperwork. Not to mention, Rissa's scars were fucking _obvious_. Nothing but fire or acid could have caused them, even to a civilian's inexperienced eye.

"It's a method of determining the fiber content in an unknown fabric." At his blank look, she went on, "Cotton burns differently than wool , and both are different from polyester, and so on. If you know what you're doing, it can be very definitive. It's only a small sample that's burned, hardly an inch square, and they seldom burst into actual flame or anything, so I didn't think— Maybe it was the smell. I just don't know. Mr. Winchester had warned us about Rissa's—condition—but I didn't think it would be enough. She handled the fire at the blacksmithing demonstration just fine—"

A forge wouldn't have produced the same smell as burning fabric—a stink Rissa would be _very_ familiar with, after all those house fires. And smell could provoke a memory much more strongly than sight.

"One of her friends knew what was going on, and helped us calm her down some. He's still in there, she wouldn't let him leave. He's the one who found her medication and told us to call you before we had even figured out what was going on."

Made sense. A close friend would have probably seen Rissa have one of these attacks before. Probably kept it from getting a lot worse, or at least helped bring her out of it. "So she's had her meds?" That was the important part. Dean had been very clear on that. Without them, she'd just keep having attacks, sometimes for days—an insane level of stress for a healthy adult; for a child with Rissa's issues....

"Yes. Almost immediately. As soon as they found them and got her something to wash them down with. She seemed a little out of it by the time we got her here, I assumed because of their effects—"

"Probably." Sam couldn't be sure on that, because to the best of his knowledge, he'd never seen Rissa after an attack, but it was a good bet. "Where's your office?"

"Just over here." Mrs. Stapper led him down a hall and pushed open a door with her name on it. It was dark and gloomy inside, the blinds pulled and the lights off, but there was enough light for him to see that Mrs. Stapper must be fairly important in the school, as her office was big enough for a couch and small conference table in addition to a large executive desk.

Rissa was lying on the couch, eyes closed, a damp paper towel on her forehead. The boy with the crutches was sitting in one of the chairs from the table, holding her good hand, and the look he shot Sam was so fiercely protective that it took everything Sam had not to laugh. He wondered if Dean and Marcy knew that Rissa had a _friend_.

"Risible?" the boy whispered. He had his own _nickname_ for Rissa? Rissa was going to be in _so much_ trouble when Dean and Marcy found out about this. Dean could barely stomach the idea of _Maggie_ dating. (The overreaction to junior prom had been epic.) "He's here."

She opened her eyes and squinted through the gloom—and did not look happy to see him. She set the paper towel neatly aside and levered herself up carefully, like an old woman, like every muscle and joint ached. Her friend scrambled to get up on his feet so that he could help her up.

"Hey, Rissa," Sam said, as gently as he could, and got an incredibly nasty look for the effort. From both of them. "Let's get you home, okay?"

She said nothing, just pushed herself off the couch, using her friend's hand for leverage. "My bags—"

"He's got it." The friend shot Sam a glare and jerked his head towards the desk. Sam took the hint and picked up Rissa's backpack and stitch bag. Plainly, Rissa wasn't going to let _him_ help her, and just as plainly, the boy wasn't about to let Sam horn in on being helpful.

She walked like she'd taken a beatdown—which Sam supposed was true enough, in a way. The limp that was normally hardly noticeable had become pronounced. And she stumbled over every uneven spot, but that was probably because of the meds. Dean had gone over them with him twice, because they weren't the kind of thing usually prescribed to kids her age, and because the side effects were pretty severe. To be honest, Sam was surprised she could walk at all.

The boy apparently had similar thoughts, because he limped beside Rissa all the way to the car, catching her whenever she stumbled. Three times Sam started to say something about how it would be smarter to let Rissa lean on him and let the kid on crutches handle the backpacks, but he never got more than a syllable out before he got another death-glare. Sam finally just gave up and walked ahead to get the Impala unlocked and make sure the door was open for her.

All that, and the boy didn't even hug her. Teenagers.

"I'll call you later," the boy said, and closed the Impala's door with a glare at Sam that left no doubt—to Sam, anyway—as to why he was saying that. That was an _I'm checking up on her, so you better treat her right_ threat if ever he'd seen one.

He didn't laugh. He felt his lips twitch, but he managed not to laugh. This was like being threatened by a kitten. Granted, the kitten could probably get in a good whack with one of those crutches, but considering that he could barely use them to walk....

Sam waited to make sure the kid got himself back up on the sidewalk and was safely limping back to the building before he got into the car. "You okay?" he asked Rissa as he started the engine. That got him a glare that even he could interpret as _no, you dumbass_. "We can go get something to—"

"I'm fine."

Well, that was more than he usually got. "Would you like to stop by Hannah's? Or I can ask her to—"

" _I'm fine._ "

Sam had a sudden flash of sympathy for his father. Had _he_ been like this? 

"And I'm _not_ hungry," she added, to his surprise. "So don't ask me about food."

"You sure—"

"No food," she said between clenched teeth. 

Maybe nausea was one of the side effects. Dean had only specifically mentioned that she shouldn't be trusted around anything more complicated than a lamp for several hours, and should probably be supervised with the lamp. "I'll get you home so you can lie down," he said. If she was still stumbling that badly when they got home, she probably wouldn't be able to manage the stairs, but he could carry her up. If she gave him any shit about it, he'd put her in the damn stairlift. Dean never used them, but Sam was pretty sure the thing had seat belts. Lacking that, there were jump ropes in the playroom. The Trio had tied him to a chair a few weeks back.

He pushed the speed limits as far as he dared and they made record time back to the house. Without the van and Bruce in the garage, there was room for him to park the Impala however necessary, so he got the passenger side as close to the interior door as he could and still have room to get Rissa out. "I'll get your stuff," he said when it looked like she might reach over the seat to get her bags. "You just get in and get to bed."

How the hell did Marcy teach _all_ of them to give him that same death-glare? "I need my bags."

Fortunately, since he'd put them in the car, the bags were behind the driver's seat and out of her reach, unless she climbed half over the seat. To keep her from doing that, Sam simply went around the car and opened the door and waited. "Come on."

She was seething now. "I want my bags."

No, that stubbornness wasn't Marcy's influence, it was Dean's. Sam had long ago lost count of the number of times he'd had to bully his brother into not doing things that were beyond his current health status. More than once he'd had to wrestle the Impala's keys away from Dean when he was drugged to the gills after a fight, which was pretty close to this situation. Dean never wanted to behave for his own good either. "Rissa, you don't need the bags right now, you need to lie down and rest."

"I. Want. My. Bags," she ground out.

_Think like a parent, Sam._ "I'll bring them in, but they're staying downstairs," he said, trying to say it the way Dean would. "You don't need them right now, and I don't want you tempted."

The hate-filled glare told him that he'd gotten the tone mostly right, anyway.

He held out his arm, but she refused to take it. No surprise there. She clung to the Impala's door, pulling herself slowly out of the car, and for a second he thought her bad leg might actually buckle beneath her, but she grabbed on to the door with both hands and kept herself from crashing to the concrete. He took the opportunity to unlock the kitchen door, and then got out of her way, reaching in to get her bags out of the car. She might have relaxed, just a bit, when she saw that he was keeping his word. Sam couldn't be sure.

That left him nothing to do but to trail behind her as she limped through the kitchen and past the dining room to the stairs. "You want me to turn on the—"

"I don't need any help!" she snapped. Her hand clenched on the stair railing and she began climbing—one step at a time, agonizingly slow, with such a death-grip on the banister that Sam was surprised she wasn't leaving marks in the wood. How did Dean manage this? 

She was probably more cooperative with Dean. And Dean probably managed to get the poor kid to bed before shoving meds into her. Had Dean said when the last attack was? There had been the one over the wedding. Before that? Probably before he moved in.

"Okay," he said, feeling helpless, and set her bags in the chairlift seat.

It hurt to watch her climb the stairs. Twice her bad leg buckled, and Sam had to restrain himself from chasing up the stairs after her. Bad as this was, if he forced his assistance on her, it might spark nightmares, and that was something neither one of them wanted.

Rissa stopped a moment at the top of the stairs, wobbling a little, and for a second Sam thought he was going to have to put her to bed after all. But she only turned around long enough to growl, "See? Fine," before she stumbled off to her room.

_Oh, you're Dean Winchester's kid, all right._

He waited until he heard her door close, then pulled out his phone and punched in a number. 

"Reynolds Carolina Enterprises."

"Hannah Reynolds, please." He was going to be _so_ happy when they got her line set up so he could dial straight in. She wouldn't answer her cell during work hours, the result being that half the company switchboard knew him by voice, and he was pretty sure they thought he was either completely lovesick or overly possessive, given the number of times a day he was calling. The fact that at least seven of the receptionists and switchboard operators were cousins did not help. _They take this whole "family business" idea way too seriously._

The irony did not escape him.

"Hi, Sam," the voice on the other end said, proving his point. "Just a minute."

At least RCE sprang for good hold music. Nothing vocal, all instrumental—didn't want to offend anybody here in the Bible Belt—but "instrumental" covered a wide range, and he was pretty sure the song playing in his ear was one of those symphonic metal bands that Firth liked so much.

A voice cut through the guitars. "Hel- _lo_ , beloved!"

Sam blinked. He wasn't sure he'd ever heard Hannah answer the phone with such a chipper voice. Definitely not in the last few weeks. " _Somebody's_ in a better mood," he said, feeling some of his own tension ebb.

"I got to order my own shiny new furniture instead of getting everybody else's hand-me-downs. It's a first for me." He smiled at that, understanding; he'd hated the extra expense, but he'd felt the same way when he had to buy new textbooks instead of used. "Rissa okay?"

"She had an attack. What are you doing tonight?"

"Tonight? Nothing. Why?"

"Do you have any idea what her favorite food is?"

"KFC. _Why_ , Sam?"

"Bring it when you come over for dinner."

"I'm coming over for dinner?"

"At the least. She's _scared_ of me, remember? I'm afraid I'm gonna push her over the edge into another attack no matter what I do." He looked up the stairs. "And I think Dean said something about how her attacks spark nightmares sometimes—"

" _Every_ time," Hannah corrected. "At least one." Sam would love to know how Hannah knew that when she hadn't been here any more than _he_ had in the last ten years, but now was not the time. "Lemme check— I can be there about sixish. Too late?"

"She doesn't even get out of camp until six, so that would actually be earlier than we usually eat."

"Then let's push it to seven. It takes at least three hours before she's ready to eat, but she'll be starving when she does, and I've gotta call B— A very cranky man in another time zone about something." She paused. "You're wanting me to stay the night, aren't you?"

He managed not to beg. "Can you?"

There was a sound of tapping keys, then some rustling papers. She must have gotten her computer set up. "I think I can. If no emergencies come up." Sam didn't ask what kind of emergency. If he showed too much interest, Third might offer Sam a job, and Sam would feel obligated to take it, and as much as he loved Hannah, he did _not_ want to wind up working with her. They weren't like Dean and Marcy; they needed the insulation of a little mystery. "I'll bring food and we'll figure it out from there, how's that sound?"

"Perfect." He glanced up the stairway. "Is there anything I—"

"Don't lock yourself in your room. You need to be able to hear in case she falls."

"Falls?" Dean hadn't mentioned falls. Dean had mentioned meds and supervision and nightmares.

"The meds throw her off enough that sometimes she forgets to compensate for her bad leg. Dean never thinks to warn people about it because he has the same issue sometimes. Last year when I was here, she did that, and she landed kinda twisted and couldn't get up without help."

"Oh. Okay."

"Find something you can do in the living room. Hell, go to the room you're using and take a nap."

Made sense. "An afternoon without the boxes will probably do me good," he said, and she laughed. 

Sam called Dean and left a message about Rissa's attack; he'd half hoped Dean or Marcy would answer, but Dean must have been right about Marcy forcing him to leave the phone in the van, where it couldn't be a distraction. They were probably only checking for messages once a day or so, which meant he likely wouldn't hear from Dean until tomorrow morning. No help for tonight. 

Sam wound up sitting on the couch, going through Rissa's file again, then re-reading one of the _Harry Potter_ books snagged from the older kids' playroom, one ear cocked for any unusual noises, but the upstairs remained silent. The house was so quiet that when the kitchen door opened and Hannah called out his name, Sam was so startled that he actually lost his hold on the book. It skittered away, and he had to get on his hands and knees to excavate under one of the love seats for it. 

"Not the view I was expecting," Hannah's voice said approvingly somewhere behind him, just as his fingers managed to find the book.

" _Hannah!_ "

"What?" she asked innocently. "I didn't say it was a _bad_ view."

Sam got to his feet and tossed the book onto the couch. "Minx. Why do I put up with you?" he asked, smiling in spite of himself.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a thorough kiss. "Because I brought supper," she said when she finally let go. "Duh."

"Is this one of those 'the way to a man's heart is through his stomach' things?"

"Silly man. The way to a man's heart is between the fourth and fifth ribs." That came with a poke in that general area. "You should know that."

He laughed. "Have I told you that you worry me?"

"Frequently. Is she up?"

"Not that I've heard."

Hannah nodded. "Sounds about right. You go set everything out, and I'll go get her. If she's asleep—"

He flinched. He could just imagine what Rissa's reaction would be to waking up with him leaning over her. "I'm not arguing. Oh, and take her bags upstairs, will you? They're on the stairlift."

Hannah grinned. "Tried to carry them up herself, didn't she?"

"It's like Dean's stubbornness is fucking _contagious_. And somehow I don't think Marcy helps."

"You _are_ learning, lover mine. And Marcy said nothing would get through that Winchester skull." He made a face at her, and she smacked his ass before heading upstairs.

***

It was like there was a completely different girl sitting at the kitchen table that night. She was still tense, and wouldn't look at him, let alone address him directly, but she gave Hannah bright smiles, if a little lopsided because of the scarring on the right side of her face, and even laughed a couple of times. Because the drugs were still in Rissa's system and limiting her dexterity, Hannah had opted for finger foods, potato wedges and chicken strips, rather than anything on the bone or requiring utensils. To Sam's surprise, they even had a playful fight over the last biscuit.

 _This is how she's supposed to be_ , he thought, a little sadly. This was a Rissa he'd never seen. This was the Rissa who was _supposed_ to be his niece, and it made his heart ache that he didn't know this girl. 

"Hey, squirt," Hannah said casually, freezing Rissa as she tried to make her escape. "Mind if I spend the night?"

Rissa gave her a look. It took the rest of the family _two_ working eyes to convey that much sarcasm. "Like I could stop you." 

"You say the word, I go home."

Rissa's gaze flicked to Sam, so quickly that he couldn't be sure he hadn't imagined it. "Keep the noise down," she said finally—channeling both parents again—and she was gone.

"You sure about this?" Hannah asked quietly. 

"You're the one who said she always has a nightmare after. _I'm_ sure as hell not going to be able to calm her out of it. I tried to help her up the stairs and she nearly had a meltdown."

"Not arguing, but having me spend the night? Didn't Dean and Marcy leave orders about that?"

"Yeah. They said not to wake her up." Hannah snorted. "Also there was something about staying out of their bed, but I really didn't think that would be an issue."

"You have absolutely no sense of adventure, Sam Winchester."

"Sure I do. I agreed to marry you, didn't I?" She gave him a look. "We are _not_ having sex in my brother's bed!"

"Prude."

"I don't think a prude could keep up with you," he said dryly, and she laughed and leaned over for a kiss.

She'd made it all the way into his lap when a young voice said "Ew," and they broke apart to find Rissa standing there, a glass in one hand. 

"You'll change your mind eventually, squirt," Hannah teased, earning herself a skeptical look that made Sam choke on laughter. Rissa rolled her eyes, put the glass in the sink, and made another hasty exit.

Hannah waited until Rissa's footsteps were going up the stairs. "Seriously, though," she said, "our surprise isn't going to be a teenager. Right?"

***

The room he'd claimed was one of the "older kid" rooms, for kids too old or too big—or too damaged—to share, across the hall from Rissa's. Sam hadn't thought about Hannah staying the night when he claimed it.

He'd gotten used to having the king bed downstairs mostly to himself—or sharing the queen mattress at Hannah's place—and had completely forgotten how annoying it was to cram two adults onto a full mattress. He'd managed with Jess, though, and every time he brought a girlfriend down for Christmas, so he and Hannah could manage for one night. She was a cuddler, anyway, so it wasn't like there was going to be a lot of space between them, even if the bed had been three times as large.

"God, I wish Marcy had better taste in nightshirts."

Sam swallowed a grin. Hannah hadn't stopped at the apartment, since it was out of the way, so she'd broken into Marcy's closet to find something to sleep in. They were about the same size, but Marcy apparently favored long, extra loose shirts for sleeping, and Hannah preferred...not so much. And Marcy was a bit more, um—

"Quit staring at my tits, Sam."

"I was looking at your anti-possession tattoo," he defended himself, trying not to laugh. "Although if that collar comes any farther down—" She automatically hitched the shirt's neckline up on one shoulder, causing it to fall further down the other one, and he had to laugh.

"I feel ridiculous," Hannah grumbled. "And quit laughing at me," she added, smacking him on the arm.

"I'm not laughing," he protested. She snarled at him. "No, really, it just reminds me of when Ananda stole one of my T-shirts a few weeks ago." Her eyes widened. "And yes, she was going around the house _wearing_ it."

Hannah just stared at him, then burst into laughter. "Oh, my God," she finally managed, falling into bed beside him. "She must have looked like she was wearing a circus tent."

"Oh, she did." 

"How did she even keep it on?"

"She got two of the bag clips out of the kitchen and used them to hold up the extra fabric around the neck." He chuckled, remembering. "I'm not sure who was more shocked, Dean or Marcy."

"Not you?"

"With Ananda? At this point, I'm getting used to it."

Hannah dialed down the lamp. "Well, at least there's one good thing about our cramped quarters," she muttered, sliding her arms around him and hooking one leg over his. "So, what'd they do?"

"Well, there was a point to be made about stealing people's clothes, of course."

"Of course. Poor Ananda."

Sam smiled. "Once we were pretty sure she'd gotten the message, I talked Anne into altering it, and gave it to her. It's now her favorite nightgown and Marcy is extremely pissed at me—"

"You mean more?"

He ignored the comment. "—because she won't wear another one long enough to get that one washed."

"You big softie."

"She kept looking at me like I'd stomped on her puppy. She didn't even break into my room for a week."

Hannah laughed. "She _so_ has you wrapped around her little finger."

"Jealous?" he asked lightly.

"Not as long as there's enough of you to wrap around mine. And our surprise's." She chuckled. "Admit it, Sam. You love your little parasite."

"There's something wrong with that child," he grumbled, "and yes, I do. Dammit."

"Being Uncle Sammy fits you, you know."

"Sure it does," he said, not quite able to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. "Just ask Rissa."

"Sam." She pushed herself up. "It doesn't work that way."

"What doesn't?"

"Family." She sighed. "Look, I love Dean like a brother, you know that, but the man has got some _serious_ issues in this area, and he made sure you got them too. Maybe because of the way you two grew up, just you and your dad and never being quite safe, but— In a normal family, there's going to be people you don't get along with. People you love but don't _like_. Maybe even people you don't love. Look at Marcy and Sean."

"If it involves Sean, I'd really rather not." Sam had _never_ seen two siblings who disliked each other that much, not without some significant history between them. Marcy and Sean didn't have that. By all reports, Marcy and Sean had simply hated each other since Sean was big enough to toddle after her.

"You know what I mean. You and Ananda are one extreme, and you and Rissa are the other. It might be that _all_ you can hope for is neutrality."

"But—"

"Sam, what if it turns out that the reason she's scared of you is because you look like somebody in one of her foster homes that tried to molest her? Are you going to try to force her to be your best friend then?"

"I'm not trying to do that _now!_ " he said, stung. "I just want her to stop acting like I'm going to hurt her! She's safe with me!"

"But she doesn't know that yet," Hannah pointed out. "It's only been six months."

"She's been adopted—"

"You haven't been _here_ but six months, all told," Hannah corrected, "and you know damn well that there are plenty of monsters that manage to camouflage themselves for that long. _Including_ the human kind. Fixing this between you, if it even _can_ be fixed— It's going to take _time_ , a lot of it, and I wish to God she _hadn't_ had that attack today because one wrong word is just going to set you two back another year or more, but this— It's what we got, Sam. There's no point in wishing for something different."

Maybe not. But he couldn't help it.

***

Sam jerked awake, and didn't know why.

Hannah moved faster than he did, mentally and physically; she was over him and out the door before his brain woke up enough to realize that there had been a scream. He staggered out of bed after her, fumbling for the lights. By the time he got to Rissa's room and turned on the lights, Hannah had gotten her awake, and Rissa had her face buried in her aunt's shoulder.

Sam stood helplessly in the doorway, watching as Hannah rocked Rissa in her arms. Part of his mind kept saying that _he_ should be doing that—but he knew that if he tried, it would just make Rissa worse. After all, this was why he'd asked Hannah to stay the night in the first place.

He slipped back to bed to wait for Hannah. It took longer than he expected; he'd dozed off, despite the lamp, and woke up when she slid back under the covers. He glanced at the clock. Nearly two hours. "Hey," he said, pulling her close.

She laid her head on his shoulder. "I don't know," she answered his unspoken question. "It's different, this time. I've seen her nightmares before, and this time.... Something's wrong."

"At the risk of sounding egotistical—"

"It might be you. It might be something else. There's so much she won't tell anybody, even now— When it comes to you, she's kinda weird."

"No shit."

"Also, she knows."

"Knows what?"

Hannah chuckled. "She _knows_ , Sam."

He sat up. "What? _How?_ "

"Don't ask me." She tugged him back down. "Maybe—"

"No. No way. Dean wouldn't—"

"I'm pretty sure he didn't. I _know_ Marcy didn't. But once I got her calmed down and tucked back in, she looked up at me, I thought she was just going to say good night, and instead she—um—asked if I was pregnant."

That _um_ spoke volumes. "That's not how she said it, is it?"

"No. And you don't want to—"

He sighed. "What did she call me?"

"Well, it was more along the lines of 'how could you possibly agree to fuck Satan and carry his spawn,' only more polite, because this is Rissa and not Maggie, but.... Hell, Sam, she doesn't—"

"I know, I know." He sighed. "I wish she'd tell me what I did."

"You may not have _done_ anything. PTSD is a funny thing. And at least half of it was that sex-is-icky attitude that kids have before they discover hormones."

"So I'm only half Satan?"

"Three fifths?" He groaned, and she laughed. "Hey, a month ago, you weren't human. You're making progress."

"Yay me."

"Give it time, Sam." She was quiet then, for so long that he'd nearly dozed off, and her voice startled him. "You know, it's weird, but I just noticed. She doesn't have any light in her room."

"Of course—"

"No, she has the lamps and the overhead light, but you turn those off, and there's no light at _all_. Her clock's one of those old-fashioned ones with hands, it doesn't even glow in the dark, and she keeps the electronics in a drawer when she's not using them. She's _taped off_ the indicator lights on the chargers and cords that have them. She's got blackout curtains on the windows, and I remember Marcy saying something about how Rissa kept complaining that the rooms were too bright until they finally put her in that one, since it faces the backyard and doesn't get anything from the security light, and even then, they had to put something on the bottom of the door to block out light from the hall. Turn off the lights, close the door, and it's _pitch black_ in there."

"I don't—"

"She asked me about the baby _after_ the lights were out."


	4. Chapter 4

Rissa acted perfectly normal the next morning, like nothing at all had happened yesterday, though that was probably helped by Hannah offering to take her to camp, since it was on her way to work. However, the dark circles under her eyes made the performance a little less than convincing. Maybe her little friend could cheer her up.

They'd barely left the house when Sam's phone rang. Dean must have checked the messages. "How is she?" he demanded, without so much as a _hello_.

"I _think_ she's okay. She doesn't really _talk_ to me, but she seemed to do better with Hannah." 

"Shit. Did Hannah—"

"Having her there helped. And—um—tell me you know about Rissa's friend."

"Which one?"

"Boy on crutches, has a thing for scarves."

"Sage? What about him?"

"When I went to pick her up, he was sitting with her. And the look he shot me—"

"Yeah, Sage doesn't have much in the way of survival instinct," Dean said dryly. "I forgot he was at the first session. I wouldn't have been as worried."

Dean just _forgot_ that a boy who had an apparent more-than-friendship bond with his thirteen-year-old daughter was going to be at the same session. Sure. And Sam was a ballerina in his spare time. "Really."

"At this point, they're knitting buddies, nothing more. Also, he's terrified of me."

"Can't imagine where he got that from."

"There may have been a...discussion...that Rissa doesn't know about."

Sam rubbed the bridge of his nose. Every time he thought Dean had acquired some common sense.... "Tell me you did _not_ pull a gun on a thirteen-year-old boy."

"Of course not, Sammy, what kind of idiot do you think I am?"

"Do you want that alphabetically or—"

"It was my old hunting knife."

"Jesus Christ, Dean, are you _insane?_ What if—"

"He looked me right in the eye, said he would never hurt Rissa, and then said—" Dean chuckled "—that if I ever pulled that knife on him again, he would knock me unconscious with one of his crutches before he called 911, DSS, and his mother, the lawyer."

"And?"

"And what? I told 'em to have fun at camp."

"You didn't think that was a little bit of overkill?"

"Hell, no. I remember what I was like at that age. Besides, I'm told this is the same age that Nick and Courtney started dating, or whatever you call it when you're thirteen."

Nick and Courtney had been married for more than twenty years and a dozen kids. "Oh, _that's_ reassuring."

"Tell me about it. Apparently, they get one every generation or so who finds the love of their life before they hit puberty. And if it's hitting _my_ kids, we can't even pretend it's genetic. Freakin' weirdos." He sighed. "Remind me to make sure they go to different colleges."

Sam managed not to laugh. It was difficult, but he managed. "That would be like when Dad made sure I didn't go to Stanford, right?" he asked innocently.

He wasn't sure if the noise that came over the line was static or a very vicious growl.

***

"You think we can get Ananda into a frilly dress?"

"Huh?" Sam jerked his attention back to the conversation. It hadn't taken him as long as he'd expected to cart off the latest load of charitable donations salvaged from Lisa's boxes, so he was sitting in the Impala in the pick-up lot at the college, waiting for Rissa to get out. Today's wedding woes had something to do with the bridesmaids, but to be honest, he hadn't been listening. He couldn't focus on a wedding four months from now when had a traumatized teenager to deal with tonight. Dean had said one nightmare usually finished the cycle, but Sam couldn't get Hannah's words out of his head. If something was wrong, did that mean an increased likelihood of more nightmares? 

"Our ringbearer, remember? Black hair, green eyes, thinks she's a leech?"

Oh, right. "Dress, maybe; frills, no way." She made a frustrated sound. "There's an easy—"

"We are not eloping, Winchester. My mother will skin me alive, and then she'll be mean to you." 

Sam shuddered. Nothing except the yellow-eyed demon had ever scared him as much as the thought of Anne Reynolds being _mean_.

"And we have to figure out _something_ to do with Kara and Nyssa—"

"I thought they were going to be flower girls." Not that Chaos and Mayhem would be his first choices, but they couldn't have Ananda in the wedding and ignore them. They were too young—and too bonded to each other—to understand.

"Only if _you_ explain to Kara that she has to toss them with her hands, not her brain."

"I can try." Maybe if he practiced hard enough between now and October, he'd be strong enough to damp down Kara's telekinesis. For the space of the procession, anyway. After that, she'd be Aunt Jo's problem. No, wait, Jo was a bridesmaid. Grandma Ellen and Uncle Bobby, then, and wouldn't _that_ be a whole other level of entertaining. "Hannah—"

She read his voice. She was getting frighteningly good at that. "I'm sorry, Sam, I can't. Not tonight. I've got a previous commitment."

 _Previous commitment?_ That wording was weird for Hannah. "Work?"

"Um. Yeah, it's work."

"That was convincing." And, again, weird. Hannah wasn't much for dissembling. Hannah's biggest problem was her propensity to tell people exactly what she thought, no matter the circumstances. How she'd survived as a hunter for ten years, he had no idea. 

"It's nothing, I promise."

Uh-huh. Maybe some of the distant cousins, the ones not involved in the family exodus, were throwing her an early bridal shower or something. "For the record, the more you say things like that, the more I wonder if you're going to wind up calling me for bail money."

"Of course I'm not. You don't have any."

"That's why I'm marrying you," he said lightly. "You got the trust fund beneficiary changed, right?"

"And here I thought you were just enamored of my tits."

He grinned. "I can't be enamored of both?"

She laughed. "Wise-ass."

"And you love me for it," he replied, but it was half automatic; his brain had moved on to worry again. How the hell was he going to manage if Rissa had another nightmare? 

"Look," she went on, and he really should figure out if she _was_ somehow reading his thoughts, "I know she's scared of you, and you're scared you're going to make it worse, but— Didn't you use to have bad nightmares? From the demon?"

Yes, but he hadn't been a terrified thirteen-year-old stuck in a house with a stranger who _also_ terrified him. When he was thirteen, he'd had Dean. And a gun. "I don't see how—"

"Just think about what you wanted when you had one. What Dean did to calm you down. She's not going to be able to recognize you at first anyway, she'll respond more to your presence, so just pretend you're Dean trying to calm _you_ down. She'll probably still want you gone when she recognizes you, but she won't be having _hysterics_ at that point either. Once she gets to that point—to where she knows where and when she is and who everybody else is—she won't _need_ help. Normally, she'd want some soothing, but in this case...." She let her words trail off. "Just— You're first aid, Sam. That's all you _can_ be, the way this thing is with you two. Get her over the crisis, and let her handle it once it's past."

He saw the first group of campers coming out of one of the buildings. The pottery kids, identifiable by the clay spattered all over them. Next would be the sewing and costumers, then the fiber arts kids like Rissa and Sage. "I don't know if I can do this, Hannah."

"Yes, you can."

"But—"

"I've seen you with the Three Hellions, Sam. I don't know who convinced you that you're terrible with kids, but they were wrong. You can handle this."

"Hann—"

"Don't argue. _You can handle this._ If you won't believe you, believe me."

Sam had to smile. "You know, you're kinda bossy."

"And you love me for it," she retorted.

"Yes, I do," he said. "God help us both."

"Are you getting mushy on me, Winchester?"

"Never," he swore, and she laughed.

***

The scream tore him out of sleep.

Years of normality had dulled certain reflexes. Between that, and the lack of demon-induced nightmares, and probably just from being older, Sam slept heavier nowadays, and he was a long way gone from the days when he came instantly awake and aware of his surroundings at any unusual noise. For several heartbeats, he wasn't sure what he'd heard.

Then it came again, a child's scream of pain, high and shrill. 

Rissa.

He staggered out of bed, reaching with his mind for the light switches, but they weren't where he thought they were and he wasn't good enough yet to flip them without knowing exactly where they were. As a result, he fumbled through the darkened bedroom, tripping on his own shoes and smashing one arm against the door before he found his way into the hall. There was a single dim nightlight on the other side of Maggie's door, which was enough to get him into Rissa's room. Thank God she was a neat kid; if her room was like Maggie's or the boys', he would've broken his neck before he made it a foot inside. Dean and Marcy insisted on _clean_ , not neat.

Very little of the light from the hall made it inside, but since he hadn't managed to find the lights—and couldn't seem to find hers, either—his eyes were adjusted enough that he could find the bed.

She was screaming in her sleep, not awake at all. "Rissa!" He reached to give her a shake—remembered too late about the scarring on her right side, and jerked his hand away. What had they been thinking, setting up the room so that her burned side was on the outer edge of the bed when she slept?

Gingerly, he sat down on the edge of the bed, pushing her over a little, and tried it again. "Rissa!" he shouted, hoping the sound would penetrate her dream. He reached for her good shoulder to give her a rougher shake this time. "Wake up!"

Abruptly, she came out of the nightmare with a full-body convulsion and another scream—and the next he knew, she was sobbing into his shoulder, her scarred arm drawn up tight against her chest and smashed between them. He put his arms around her warily, but she was so distraught she didn't even flinch.

God. What did she see in those dreams that left her like this? There had to be more to it than just fire, even with as many fires as she'd witnessed.

"It's okay," he soothed. "I gotcha." Dean had always said that to him, and he'd seen Dean say it to the Trio when one woke from a nap with bad dreams. No reason to think he wouldn't say it to the older kids too. 

She choked something out, all tangled up in the sobs, but all he could make out was "fire" and "Hannah." Memories tangling with fears, maybe, creating a nightmare of the fire poltergeist going after Hannah? It would make sense. "It's just a dream," he said softly, awkwardly patting her on the back. Had she been burned on her back? That would have been in with her medical records, but he hadn't thought to look at those, just the foster care file. He was an idiot.

He thought it was working. Just as Hannah had predicted, for the first few minutes, Rissa reacted only to his presence, either unable or unwilling to notice anything but that someone was there with her, holding the dream at bay.

But then she started to relax, to get a hold on it, to come _out_ of it, and either her subconscious recognized that the person holding her didn't _feel_ like her father, or she woke up enough to remember that there was only one other person in the house.

She tensed in his arms, looked up at him—

And screamed. 

No pain this time, real or remembered. No illusion sparked by a dream. Just pure terror.

She scrambled away from him with a speed he would never have thought she could manage, given that bad leg, and backed into the headboard. For a second, he thought she might _climb_ the thing, just to get that last two inches before she had to burrow into the wall. "Get out!" she yelled.

"Rissa—"

" _GET OUT!_ " Her good leg lashed out at him, catching him smack in the sore arm, and it took every ounce of control he had not to swear. " _Get out of my room!_ "

Sam got to his feet and eased towards the door, not wanting to set her off. "Rissa, it's okay, I'm leaving, all right? I just wanted to make sure you were okay." He bumped into the doorjamb and stopped. "I won't—"

Something came flying out of the darkness toward him. He had only that instant before it hit him in the nose, _hard_ , hard enough that pain exploded through his face and his eyes teared up. " _Fuck!_ " he yelped. Rissa had clearly missed her calling as a pitcher. 

" _Stay away from me!_ " 

"I'm leaving," he said, as evenly as he could manage—good _God_ , his nose hurt—but first picked up the—octopus? what the hell?—and set it carefully on the dresser. "Just— If you need anything, I'm here, okay?"

She charged out of her bed towards him. He backed away, into the hall, hoping he wasn't about to take another stuffed animal to the nose—

And the door slammed in his face. A second later he heard the click of the lock.

 _Dammit._ Dean and Marcy had strict rules about the use of locks on the kids' bedrooms. Locking it against an adult was absolutely forbidden. They didn't often let the kids lock them against each other, but sometimes they had to, in order to teach littler ones about respecting privacy.

He had the key. All the kids' rooms had the same lock. But if he tried to enforce that right now—

 _Does it matter?_ Unless the house caught on fire, she wasn't going to be in any danger, and forcing the issue might just make things worse.

"You don't tell your dad and I won't," Sam said finally.

***

Rissa didn't care about the rules, she just had to get him and the fire _out of here_. 

She locked the door, and then pushed against the dresser until it moved far enough over that it blocked the door from opening. Moving the furniture like that was another no-no, and not just because it was risking more damage to her bad leg and arm—but if Mom and Dad had given him the key, he could still get in here. The dresser probably wouldn't stop him, but it would give her some warning. She could— She could—

She clutched Beowulf to her chest and slid to the floor. Pain shot up her arm, down her leg, through her eye. 

She could what? Climb out the window? Jump two stories to the _brick patio_ and cripple herself permanently? Or worse?

Fire. So much fire. He kept bringing in the fire, trying to burn her sanctuary, trying to destroy everything— Why did he keep _doing_ that? Why couldn't he leave her alone? She was _one person_ , he couldn't stand to have one niece not falling at his feet? 

The last afterimage of the flames finally faded into darkness. Her senses adjusted. No threats. No fire. Just darkness. The remembered pain began to ease off, but her arm ached, the way it always did after a nightmare. And now her head was starting to throb, in a way it hardly ever did, making her view of the room pulse oddly around the edges. 

She wanted Mom and Dad. They knew what to do. Not like _him_. 

They didn't bring fire into the darkness.

She crawled into the tiny corner left between the dresser and the wall and curled up into it, pain be damned. "The darkness is safe," she whispered, over and over again, as tears soaked into Beowulf's fuzz. "The darkness is safe."

***

Sam didn't need to ask when Rissa finally emerged from her room, at the last possible minute before he'd be forced to climb the stairs and fetch her. It was plain—to him, at least—that she hadn't slept at all since she woke up from that nightmare. He'd seen that haunted, worn expression before—in the mirror, in those days when every night brought alternating nightmares of Jessica and visions from the demon.

Rissa was limping, though she was working _very_ hard to hide any sign of weakness, and he didn't like the way she had her right arm tucked up against her body or the way she held her head, like she was trying to keep the scars on her face and neck from stretching. For a minute, he considered not taking her to camp at all. Missing one day wasn't going to hurt her. She wouldn't lose any work on her big project, either; it came home every night, so she could work on it here, as opposed to whatever little things they did in the workshops.

But there was something about the wounded look in her eyes.... If he kept her home, even if he left her in her room, he'd just be forcing them into more contact—she had to eat at some point—and she clearly needed to get _away_ from him. Maybe time with her little boyfriend would help.

So he did the only thing he could do: He didn't mention it. He offered to carry her bags, but he did that every morning. He _did_ make sure the Impala's passenger door was open before she got to the car, but didn't close it for her, and he didn't try to force a conversation on the drive to camp.

Sage was already there, skulking around the drop-off and failing miserably at looking casual. If the situation had been just a little less tense, Sam would have laughed. 

Instead, he kept to the routine, wishing her a nice day—he always did—and driving away as soon as she and Sage were safely out of the way. He only went as far as one of the outlying parking lots, though. He was too distracted for morning traffic, Hannah wouldn't be awake enough to talk for another hour or so, and he did _not_ want to unpack boxes right now.

He was failing at this. Failing _miserably_. He should never have let Dean talk him into this. He should have insisted that they find somebody else, a more distant relative or a friend or somebody from Marcy's church. Sage's parents, maybe. All he was doing was making Rissa's trauma _worse_.

His nose still hurt from where that damn octopus had hit, in a way that meant he was damn lucky not to look like he'd just escaped a barfight; Dean must have stuffed half a pound of jade inside the thing. Rissa was either a natural, like Dean with throwing knives, or that had been the luckiest throw ever. She could have just aimed at center mass—that's what he would have done at her age, considering the darkness and the fact that he'd been silhouetted against the meager hall light—but that should have hit him in the chest, not the face. No kid of Dean's had aim _that_ off. Hitting what they threw things at—and hitting them _where_ they aimed at—was part of their self-defense training. A _big_ part, since even a child too young to be taught to use knives or guns could manage to get hold of a rock and throw it hard enough to distract an attacker. And that training started as soon as a kid moved in; Nyssa was already able to hit a target with a rock, almost every time. Rissa had been doing this for five _years_.

There was something wrong here. Something _really_ wrong.

Wait. 

A nearly pitch-black room, but she was somehow able to see him. And she had been able to tell that Hannah was pregnant, but Hannah wasn't showing yet, not at _all_ , and it wasn't common knowledge, even in the family. They'd only told her parents, Firth, and Dean and Marcy. The rest of the family might _suspect_ the reason behind their quick engagement and rushed wedding plans, but they were going to be polite and ignore it until it was obvious or announced.

What was it Dean had said when Nyssa came in? Very young children didn't always realize that what they could do wasn't normal, so it was easier to figure out that something was up, because they thought it was a universal—Ananda's visions, Kara's telekinesis, Nyssa's ghosts. But Rissa had been older when she came in, better acquainted with the world's concept of _normal_ , and if she had a subtler ability, one that hadn't caused trouble, or had caused just enough to make her realize she needed to keep it quiet—or hadn't become an issue until after she was hurt....

 _Shit._ If she had some kind of Sight, if she was seeing something about him, if she'd learned the hard way that she needed to keep it quiet, that would explain why she wouldn't tell anybody why she was so scared of him. If it had caused problems with other families, that would _also_ explain why she wouldn't trust Dean and Marcy with it.

Of course, she'd have to talk to him in order for him to verify the theory, which wasn't likely to happen. Except for that one dinner with Hannah, she bolted her food and ran, stopping only long enough to clean up her dishes. If they had a real meal, with silverware and actual dishes, he might be able to keep her in the kitchen long enough to force a conversation, especially since she was too well-mannered to abandon him with a sinkful of dirty dishes. 

The trouble with that plan was that he couldn't cook.

No, wait. 

There was _one_ thing he could manage. He just needed to stop by the grocery store.

***

He waited for Rissa to get into the house ahead of him that afternoon, and had a moment's triumph when she stopped in the door to the kitchen, looking confused. "What's that smell?"

"Spaghetti sauce."

"You _cooked?_ "

He should probably be upset at the incredulous tone, but every meal since the family had left had been cereal, sandwiches, or takeout, so she had a legitimate reason to be surprised. "It doesn't happen often. Don't tell Ananda, or she'll insist that I do it all the time." He grinned at her. She didn't smile back. He managed not to sigh. "It'll be ready as soon as I cook the pasta and heat up the bread. You want to fix the salads? Stuff's in the fridge." 

The answer was plainly _no_ , but to his surprise, she set her bags near the door to the hall, out of the way, went over to one of the cabinets and pulled out two bowls, then tackled the salad materials.

Sam stifled a sigh, and turned his attention to the pasta and garlic bread. 

This would be so much easier if she were a brat.

***

The spaghetti was decent, which surprised her. Actually, it was pretty good, if you overlooked the fact that it was store-bought sauce. She didn't know why he'd bought it when there was an entire shelf of Grandma's homemade sauce in the pantry, though. Maybe he just didn't know better. 

But if he could cook, why were they living off restaurant food? He hadn't even attempted anything frozen, so she'd figured he was one of those people who couldn't manage a microwave. Maybe it was just that one thing he could cook, like Mom's pepper steak. 

She couldn't help but wonder if he was up to something, though. He seemed to be...waiting. For her to talk? Surely not. Surely even he knew better by now.

It came when she was almost done with her first bowl.

"Rissa," he said, giving her a look that would be utterly pathetic if he weren't so dangerous, "we need to talk about what happened last night."

She hastily swallowed her mouthful. "Nothing happened."

"We both know that's not true. You started screaming at me. I'd like to know why." She didn't answer. "Rissa, I know I'm not your favorite person, all right? But you damn near gave me a black eye with that octopus, and then you violated all your parents' rules against locking doors and moving furniture. Everybody tells me you're the best-behaved kid in this entire family, including all your thousands of cousins, so something is _seriously_ wrong here. Tell me, or I'm going to have to tell your mom and dad about this. And I know how your dad'll react, because I know how he used to handle _me_ when I broke the big rules, and that lock thing is a big rule in this house."

Dad raised him. She remembered Mom saying that. She'd forgotten it, thinking it was ridiculous. Dad wasn't _that_ much older than he was. "Where were your parents?" she asked instead. Maybe she could distract him.

She hated his eyes. Even when they weren't obscured by fire, they were always changing color, depending on the light, never stable. Now they seemed to darken. "Our mom died when I was a baby, and our dad was—gone a lot. When he was gone, Dean was in charge. That's where he got all his practice for you guys," he added lightly, like his dead parents were a joke, something funny. 

None of this was funny. 

"And don't try to change the subject," he added.

 _Damn_ it. And if he told Mom and Dad about her locking the door— Mom had been _very_ specific about the approved circumstances, and she should have called Aunt Hannah when she did that, and she _hadn't_. And he apparently wasn't above blackmail.

"I had a nightmare," she said finally. "You can't expect me to be rational after a nightmare."

"I don't," he said, to her surprise. "But you went ballistic _after_ you came out of it, and _that's_ what we need to get aired out."

"Nothing—"

"Rissa!" he interrupted sharply.

Instinct reacted, adrenaline surged—and she froze. She always froze. No matter how much she worked at it with Dad and their self-defense teachers, she couldn't seem to get a handle on _fight or flight_ , just _freeze_. And now she could smell smoke.

No. She couldn't have an attack with him sitting _right there_. It was too dangerous. 

But the fire that always hovered around him was flaring, flames shooting higher, and the smoke was thicker, obscuring the garlic-and-tomato smell of the spaghetti.

If she got away from him, maybe—but he was between her and the hall that led to the rest of the house. He could easily grab her if she ran that way. The garage? Not really an escape. She could hide in the woods, if she could get that far, but she couldn't _get_ anywhere. It was _miles_ to the nearest neighbor's house. She couldn't call anybody to come help, either, because her phone was in her stitch bag and it was on the other side of him—

" _Rissa!_ " Fingers snapped right in front of her nose, giving her something to focus on, to anchor the panic. It wasn't much, just enough to stuff down the worst of it, to focus on the kitchen and the table and the remnants of her dinner. The room still stank of smoke, and the fire around him was blazing— "Are you—"

"I'm fine!" She looked into her bowl, then at her salad. She hadn't eaten much at lunch, or at all yesterday, and she was starving. Mom and Dad knew to _make_ her eat after an attack; he didn't, and he hadn't pushed the issue last night. She was reaching a point where she'd get sick if she didn't—so she _really_ needed to finish this meal, or she was going to be even worse off.

But that meant staying here at the table. With _him_. With the fire.

She reached hesitantly for her fork. 

"Rissa." His voice sounded very human at that moment, all stressed and cracking. "For the love of _God_ , will you just _tell_ me what I did to make you so scared? Just so I don't do it again?"

"I had a—"

"Not last night! You've been scared to _death_ of me since the day you met me, as far as I can tell, even if you did manage to hide it until I moved in! What did I _do?_ "

"Nothing." That much she could say honestly. It wasn't what he _did_ , it was what he _was_.

He reached up to rub the bridge of his nose, and sighed. "Rissa, I swear, I'm not going to hurt you. You're my _niece_ —twice over, after the wedding. I couldn't hurt you any more than I could hurt Ananda. Just— This can't go on like this. Not for me."

"It's noth—"

"My sore eye says otherwise," he snapped. "I won't tell anybody, if that's what you're worried about. Just _tell_ me!"

"No." If she told him, he'd tell Mom and Dad, and if Dad knew what she saw, they'd send her back. This was his _brother_ , after all. "I'm done," she said, sliding out of her chair. Food wasn't worth this. She could sneak downstairs later, after he was in bed. Maggie always kept some candy in her desk drawer, and Kevin and Johnny always had a stash of snacks in their room. They wouldn't mind if she took some as long as she replaced it.

"Not this time," he said, and reached out.

She didn't know if he meant to grab her arm, or just block the way. It didn't matter. Panic sent her flying back against the wall, trying to get out of his way, to keep him from touching her, to keep the fire away.

" _That's_ what I'm talking about," he said. "That is not a normal reaction, Rissa. Even accounting for everything that's happened to you."

Smoke was starting to haze the room again. The air was thickening. She had to get out of here.

And he wasn't going to let her.

"Rissa—"

"I saw the fire!" she shouted, desperate. He said he just wanted to know, so maybe, if she told him, he'd back off. "It's all around you!"

"Fire?" he repeated, glancing around. His confusion could have been funny if he were anyone else. "What fire? There's not any—"

"You're on fire and you don't burn! _You never burn!_ "

His jaw dropped, and he just sat staring at her, while little flames danced up the scar across his face and fanned themselves through his hair. "You see...fire. Around me."

"Yes," she said, edging toward the garage door. The woods were better than this.

But he figured out what she was doing, and slid his chair out—far enough that between that and his freakish gigantic reach, she would never make it even to the garage door. Not unless he _let_ her. And he clearly wasn't going to.

She gave up and retreated to the meager safety of her own chair. At least she could keep the table between them. She might still freeze at threats, but she was _very_ good with forks once she got past the initial reaction. Dad approved, since you could carry a fork anywhere and nobody blinked.

"Fire. Okay. I— Give me a minute on this one." He sat there a second, then picked up his fork and poked at his salad. She reached for her own fork, but not to eat. If he came at her— "It's just me? Not your dad?"

"No! Of course not!" Dad was _good_ , and _safe_ , all the things _he_ couldn't be. Couldn't _ever_ be.

"And that's what scares you?"

"Wouldn't it scare you?" she retorted.

That got her a huffing little laugh. "Yeah, I guess maybe it would." He ate a bit of his salad, then—as if he'd noticed her death-grip on her own utensils—put the fork down. "Rissa, what you're seeing— It might just be a—an afterimage. There's been a lot of fires in my life. Mom—your grandmother, I mean— She died in a fire." 

She felt her eyes widen. When she was in the hospital, when she was trying to figure out how to make them let her die, why hadn't Dad mentioned that? Why hadn't anybody _ever_ mentioned it? 

"Like I said, I was just a baby, so I don't remember, but— I heard Dean and our dad talk about it often enough. Later, when I was in college, there was another fire. That one killed my girlfriend." He sat there, looking off into the distance, absently tapping a finger on the table. Sparks flew into the air. "That's why I asked if it was just me. Your dad was there for both of them, so if it was just the fires, it could have marked him, too." He hesitated, then asked, "You've never seen this with anybody else? Ever?"

There was one. "T.J.," she said softly. T.J. had aged out before she came in, and he was too busy with his restaurants to visit often, so it had never really been the kind of issue it had become with _him_.

"T.J.? Your foster brother T.J.?" She nodded, and he muttered something in such bad language that even Aunt Hannah would have called him on it. "So _that's_ what it is."

"What—"

"The fires weren't natural, Rissa."

Not natural. Like hers. "A poltergeist?" The words came out as barely more than a whisper.

"No. A demon. With Mom, we think she interrupted it when he was doing something to me. We never figured out exactly what. He was collecting certain kids, marking them somehow when they were six months old. Sometimes, there was a fire. T.J.'s mom died the same way our mom did. We were never _sure_ , but if you're seeing fire around both of us...."

"The demon marked both of you and somehow I can see it as fire."

He blinked. Grown-ups never expected it when a kid figured something out. "Maybe, yeah. There aren't any others left, not that we can be sure about, or I could prove it. We only found out about T.J. because his dad died and he went into the foster system. The kids the demon claimed— It never really did anything from six months until they turned twenty-two, and with T.J., it never got a chance to complete the claim." 

"What if it does? What if it comes back?" If he was marked by some kind of fire demon, then he was just as dangerous as she thought, no matter what Dad said.

He smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "You _never_ have to worry about him again. Your dad and I killed him. That's what happened to his legs. How I got this." He touched the scar that cut across his face.

"That's not the demon's mark?"

He didn't—quite—flinch. "No. Well, I guess you _could_ say it was, since I got it fighting the demon, but whatever he did to us, it was done long before that. No matter what you see, Rissa, this is just a scar. Like yours, or the ones on your dad's legs, or the bites on Maggie's neck."

"You're sure?"

"Very. I had stitches and everything."

He said that lightly, like Dad when he'd tried to ease her physical therapy with jokes and their finger-wiggle, but he _wasn't_ Dad, and it wasn't funny. Especially not with fire continuing to smolder in his eyes and run down his arms.

"There's more, though, isn't there?" he said quietly. "It's not just the fire—that's just a side effect. You weren't just aiming at the center of the fire when you threw that octopus at me. You can see in the dark, can't you? Even the bad eye."

The fork dropped from fingers that had gone as numb as the ones on her right hand. She stared at him. How had he—

"Rissa, there is no other way you could have seen me well enough to hit me right in the nose like that. I've figured out enough from sparring with your brothers and sisters to know that you guys hit what you aim for. And I can't think of any other reason why you'd be so insistent on having your room pitch-black. Any little light blinds your—your night-vision, doesn't it?" 

She should have aimed lower. Dad had made comments about him being smart, and she wished he'd been wrong. Now that he knew, he was going to tell Mom and Dad, and things would just go wrong all over again. 

"Do you know which came first?" he asked. "Have there always been people with fire?"

"I don't know," she whispered. "I don't think so."

"And it's always there?"

"The fire is all the time. The other is only in the dark." She stared down into her bowl. "I used to be able to see it. The poltergeist, I mean. It wasn't fire, but in the dark, I could see it. I'd try to tell people, warn them, but they'd tell me I was seeing things, so I'd think maybe I was, and when I ignored it...it got mad."

"And that's when it started the fires." She nodded. "It wasn't your fault, Rissa. A fire poltergeist— Without fire, it can't feed. It would have started them eventually anyway."

Dad had said that to her, the very first time her caseworker brought him into her hospital room. Mom said it, too, every time a previous foster parent called to check on her and Rissa had to remember what had happened to them.

She could believe it from them. From him....

"Your parents don't know about your night-vision, do they?" She shook her head. "You need to—"

"No! They'll send me back!" It was enough of a miracle that Mom and Dad had actually _adopted_ her, as messed up as she was. She couldn't risk it.

"Send you back?" he echoed. "Why would— Oh, God, Rissa." His voice sounded surprisingly hurt. "Tell me you don't actually _believe_ that. Please." 

She couldn't look at him. If she did, he might see the tears. "It's gone," she said. "It's not a danger to anybody else anymore."

"So you think they could get rid of you in good conscience, because it would be safe? Jesus _Christ!_ " She flinched. He must have seen it, because he lowered his voice. "Rissa," he said softly, "think about your little sisters. Kara's a telekinetic and Ananda sees the future. Do you really think a little night-vision is going to scare _your_ parents?"

Maybe. It wasn't anything Sage hadn't said before. But.... Kara and Ananda were _intact_. The only reason Ananda wasn't conventionally adoptable was because of the psychic vibe she gave off; otherwise, someone would have snapped her up as an infant. 

They looked _normal_. Adults found them both adorable. Adults didn't see them and stare and stammer and look everywhere but _at_ her. Other kids didn't stare. 

Nobody ever suggested it would have been kinder to let them die.

"They love you, and there is _nothing_ on earth that will make them give you up, Rissa," he was going on. "Not ever. Not your parents. Your dad would flatten anybody who even suggested it, trust me. If they were _very_ lucky, he would only shoot them once." He paused, and added, "And then he'd let your mother at them." 

That startled a short laugh out of her, she couldn't help it. For some reason, people _expected_ Dad to be overprotective, even if they underestimated him because of the wheelchair. Nobody _ever_ saw Mom coming. Teachers who had survived repeated conferences with Dad had quit after just one encounter with Mom in a mood.

"Your dad— Family's important to him, Rissa. More important than he lets on, even. And family doesn't stop with blood, as far as he's concerned. Once he considers somebody family, he doesn't let go. If you won't believe me, think about the fosters. The kids that aged out, not the little ones. Like T.J. and Teri. If he treats them like blood, why would he get rid of you, when they _adopted_ you?"

She wanted to believe him. She _did_. But....

She looked down at her hands, at the ugly burnt one, and automatically flexed the fingers. Sometimes she still remembered what it felt like to have four, but she couldn't remember what it had felt like for them to move normally, or what the skin had looked like before it was burned. 

_Finger wiggle_ , Dad would say, as much to check and see if she'd been doing her exercises as to keep their little joke going. He didn't really need to do it anymore, and with the younger kids needing so much attention.... 

He drained his glass, then stacked his bowls and stood up. She reached for her own bowl. "No, you finish," he said, and she looked up at him. "I talked to your dad this morning, and he said you sometimes didn't eat well after a nightmare. Right?" She nodded. The panic was subsiding, leaving phantom pain in her arm and leg, letting her hunger resurface. "I think we both know you'll be more comfortable without me in the room right now. Don't worry about cleaning up; I'll put the leftovers up later. I'm going to go work on the never-ending boxes." He sighed. "This one actually has valuable stuff in it. I think it was supposed to go to California. Not that I'm going to tell her."

That came with a smile—meant to be conspiratorial? reassuring? She wasn't sure.

But there was still half her salad left, including a lot of pepperoni, so she reached for her fork and stabbed at it. She still needed to eat. She needed to focus on taking care of herself. Mom and Dad expected her to.

The bowls clanked into the sink, and he walked toward the pantry entrance to his room. She felt herself relaxing, a little more with every step.

"Rissa—" 

She froze. He'd stopped next to the fridge. Why wouldn't he just _leave?_

"I know— You're never going to be comfortable around me if you're seeing fire, and I _get_ that, and it's okay. I can—I mean, _we_ can work with this, now, even if you feel like you need things to stay the way they are. And I said I wouldn't tell your parents, and I _won't_ —but I think you should. I know my opinion probably means nothing to you, but...." He let the words trail off, and sighed. "It's just— Hannah loves you, too, Rissa, and she really wants you in the wedding. So—just think about whether it's fair to her, okay? If you really feel like you can't, at least think about telling her why." 

Rissa nodded, not looking up. 

"And—" He paused. It sounded like he was waiting, so she forced herself to look at him. The fire had died down, back to its usual flickers along his scar, in his eyes. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"For telling me," he said quietly, and finally left, taking the fire with him.

***

The fear hadn't gone away. Sam hadn't expected it would, to be honest. Not if she was seeing fire.

Whatever the demon had done to him, there was nothing he could do about it now. Nothing but give her time and space, and not expect more than she could give. Their relationship was never going to be like his and Ananda's. It wouldn't even be like his and Maggie's. But now, there was at least the possibility that someday, there _would_ be one.

The fear was _lessened_ , at least. Not her fear of fire—if anybody had an excuse for lifelong pyrophobia, it was Rissa—but of _him_ , which was probably as much as he dared ask. And—maybe more importantly—some of the tension was gone. Conversation was still not happening, but if he asked her a direct question now, she answered, and she made requests for dinner. One morning, she even asked (albeit a little nervously) if he could pick something up for her from a craft store, something she was running out of but needed for her projects. She provided a neat little list with explicit instructions—of what she wanted (it looked like one of Dad's codes: _DMC 221 x 7, 223 x 4, 3042 x 5, 3371 x 10, 5200 (NOT 000) x 20_ ), where to find it in the store (complete with map), directions to the store (another map), who to ask if he needed help (Christel or Kat), and twenty-five dollars to pay for it, presumably out of her allowance.

She clearly expected him to turn the request down, but it wasn't like he was doing anything else. He was down to the last box and Hannah had had to fly out west for something job-related, and Rissa had gone to so much trouble....

She almost—not quite, but almost—smiled when he handed her the shopping bag. She _did_ smile when she saw just how many skeins of 5200 he'd bought—way more than her money would have allowed. It was white; he'd figured she'd always need white for _something_ , and there'd been a sale. 

It was a little victory, maybe, but still sweet.


	5. Chapter 5

The family didn't so much return to the house as storm it. The last time Sam had felt the _air_ change like that, there had been a demon involved.

" _Uncle Sammy!_ " someone in the confusion shrieked. Before he could check to see if his ears were bleeding, a child launched herself out of the chaos, straight into his arms. She was starting to get some height on those leaps.

"Hi, Parasite," he gasped, trying to get Ananda's weight settled so that her knee wasn't permanently lodged in his diaphragm, and that was all the encouragement she needed to start chattering at top speed.

And then two more small children slammed into his legs.

Of course. Where Parasite went, Chaos and Mayhem were sure to follow. If Nyssa's father's rights ever did get terminated, Sam might never come to this house again.

"Have fun camping?" he asked, and got something screechy and happy-sounding in answer. "Whatcha got?" He ducked the—er—whatever-it-was Ananda was waving. It looked like a stick wrapped in felt.

"I made you a present!"

Shit. Where the hell was Dean? Or even Marcy?

Dean had just rolled into the room. He took one look, and drove out of traffic and parked. By the grin, he could only be waiting to see Sam's reaction.

Sam stifled a sigh and accepted the—doll?—gingerly. It was exactly what he'd thought at first: a stick that branched in two at the bottom, with pipe cleaners for arms and wrapped in felt for clothes. A piece of bark had been glued to one end for a face. Sam assumed it was meant to be _his_ face, given the mixed brown and green glitter used for the eyes, the black mark that cut diagonally across it, and the unkempt fuzzy stuff serving as the doll's hair. Where the hell did you even find _brown_ glitter?

"Unca Sammy!" Kara said, and shoved _another_ makeshift doll into his hands. It was almost identical to Ananda's, except that this one had green glitter eyes, a gold bead on a string around its "neck," a twig cane in one pipe-cleaner hand, and the fuzzy stuff was shorter. It must be intended to represent Dean.

He eyed Nyssa suspiciously, but all she had was a rock painted black. A rock that was vaguely shaped like—

"'Pala!" she shouted (and if his ears weren't bleeding this time, it was a miracle).

Sam glared at his brother across the room. _Glitter?_ he mouthed.

Dean only shrugged, and pointed at Marcy as she walked by. _Arts and crafts,_ he mouthed back.

And then Sam saw the fresh new cast on Dean's leg. "You broke it _again?_ " he demanded.

"It was last night, Sam, calm down. We stopped by a clinic on the way back in and Marcy's already made the appointment for tomorrow. C'mon, guys, you gave him his presents, now go unload your stuff." Ananda hopped down and Kara and Nyssa let go, Nyssa shoving the rock into his now-free hand as she went, and the Trio scampered for the garage.

"What the hell am I supposed to do with these?" Sam hissed.

"Well, you can either play with them, Samantha—" Sam growled. "—or you can put them on the mantel and dust them occasionally. Dude, they're presents. Do what you normally do with knickknacks." He glanced around, but everybody seemed to be managing the unloading well. "Quick, in here," he said, and wheeled into the dining room. "Shut the door." 

Sam obeyed, confused, but it gave him a chance to set his handful of makeshift toys on the table. Nyssa's rock Impala was better-painted than he'd thought; it even had white-paint "chrome" in the right places. "Did you—" He looked up.

Dean had gotten between him and the door. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"You two getting along better?"

Of course. He'd known they'd have this conversation, he'd just expected Dean to get everybody into the house first. Sam sighed inwardly and pulled out a chair.

"Oh, _shit_ ," Dean said as Sam sat down. "This can't be good."

"She's your kid. It's fucking _complicated_."

"Great, now I'm proud _and_ scared."

Sam had nothing to say to that. "We had a talk the day after her second nightmare. We've...come to an agreement."

"Sam—"

"We're not going to be friends. Not now, maybe not ever. Just—accept that."

"But—"

" _Dean_. You _need_ to accept this."

"You're family!" Dean protested. "You can't act like—"

"We can be civil to each other, and she's not running away from me anymore, and that's all that matters," Sam said, with way more conviction than he actually felt. "Trying to force more won't help either one of us, and it'll just make her hate me. She's not as scared as she was. Be happy with that."

"But—" Dean clearly couldn't get his head wrapped around this. "You're _family_ ," he said again, a little helplessly.

And that was the problem, just like Hannah said. For Dean, family was everything, and their family had been so small, he just _couldn't_ comprehend the idea of _not_ being close. "That's not an automatic solution," Sam said. "Maybe we can work towards something more, between her growing up and me marrying Hannah. Maybe she can get used to me. Just don't force it. I don't want to wind up the Sean to her Marcy."

Dean made a show of shuddering. "I don't think _anybody_ wants that. Two of them in the family is more than enough."

"Amen." Sam picked up Ananda's doll and fiddled with the pipe-cleaner arms. "There is one thing you need to know."

"About what the problem is?"

"No. She's going to have to tell you that on her own." That was one confidence Sam had no intention of breaking. It would destroy their little truce, and he might never earn another one. "But there _is_ something you need to know. About _why_ she won't tell you herself."

"Which is?"

"She thinks if she does, if you find out, you'll send her back."

Dean just stared at him. "What?"

"It—this thing— She thinks it's enough that, because she's not perfect—" It was very hard to find words with Dean looking at him that murderously. Sam focused on the doll. "She thinks if you find out, you'll cancel the adoption—"

"That's not possible."

"She's _scared_ , Dean, it doesn't _have_ to make sense. She honestly thinks you'll send her back to the foster system. Because the poltergeist is gone now, so it wouldn't be risking lives to do it."

"She can't _possibly_ —"

"Dean, she's more terrified of that than she is of me." He hesitated. Made himself put the doll down and look his brother in the eye. "It turns out it's not just me, by the way. It's also T.J."

"T.J.?" Dean's eyes darkened—undoubtedly as he thought back over any time Rissa and T.J. had been in the house together. "Fuck," he finally whispered. "You're right. She avoids him like— He's just never home anymore. But the two of you don't have—" 

The words skidded to a stop. For all that Dean constantly downplayed his intelligence, he wasn't stupid, especially when it came to his kids. "Shit," he muttered. "Shit, shit, _shit!_ She sees _fire_ , doesn't she? Nothing else would make her react the way she does."

Sam had only said he wouldn't _tell_. He'd said nothing about not confirming it if Dean guessed. "I don't know how, but yeah. I told her I wouldn't tell you."

"Jesus _Christ!_ I thought that fucker was done making our lives miserable when we fucking _killed_ him!" By the look in his eyes, Dean wanted to hit something—but there was only the table, and that thing was so massive it would probably do more damage to him. "No fucking _wonder_ she runs, if she thinks it means something's—"

"I explained. As best I could, anyway. That we killed it and it wouldn't be coming after us—or her. But...."

"She has no reason to trust you, not if she's seeing fire." Dean gave up and slammed his fist into the table. " _Fuck_."

"Dean—"

"No, I'm okay. I mean, I will be. Just—" He shook his head. "Every fucking time, man. Every time I think we are _done_ with that goddamned fucker, something _else_ comes up. First it was T.J., now this—"

"There won't be any more," Sam reminded him quietly.

"No, but that still leaves us with fixing the damage the asshole _already_ did. God." Dean took a deep breath, clearly trying to calm himself down. "I wish she'd said something. Anything. If I'd known, I wouldn't have—"

"And I wouldn't have let you," Sam said, cutting off the guilt. "But we _didn't_ know, and the damage has been done, and— Sorry, Dean, but I'm just the uncle. Fixing this one is _your_ job."

Dean gave him a sour glare. "I'm _so_ gonna remind you of this when that kid turns out to be a girl and you get stuck living with _two_ Reynolds women."

Sam cringed. He could barely handle one. "You don't mean that."

"Right now? I sure as hell do." He sighed. "I hate it when you're right. But— We'll fix it. Somehow. I just don't know where she'd _get_ the idea that we'd send her back because of a little wacky vision. Especially after Ananda and Kara. I mean, she's _seen_ what they do, it took us _weeks_ to get it through Kara's head that it was dangerous to play with Rissa's needles, not to mention just how annoyed it made Rissa."

"I don't think she got it from you, if that helps."

Dean snorted. "It actually doesn't, Sammy, but thanks for trying." He leaned back in his chair. "Is there any _good_ news?"

"Your guest room is a guest room again, and free of Lisa's shit, and I even managed to air it out a little so it doesn't smell like a nursing home. Do I need to turn in my keys?"

"Keep 'em. You'll wind up back over here."

"I will?"

"Everybody else married to a pregnant Reynolds has. _Including_ Deb. Why should you be special?"

"Thanks. I think."

"They wind up here because Marcy won't lecture them the way the others will. And you _will_ get kicked out at least once. In fact, you might want to go back and make the guest room bed, unless you plan on sleeping upstairs."

"Oh." That was...less than reassuring. "At least nobody will be in the bed who's not supposed to be."

Dean grinned. "What _are_ you going to do without Ananda sneaking in every night?"

"Enjoy my sleep."

"Like Hannah's gonna let you _sleep_."

"She's _pregnant_. Eventually— What?"

Dean just smirked at him. "Yeah, you should probably ask Andy about how he and Kim scandalized the hell out of some poor ultra-conservative Southern Baptist nurse right after they got her checked in. Come to think of it, I think that's how David and Jenn jump-started labor when she went—"

"God, Dean, I don't need to _know_ that!" If nothing else, Sam needed to be able to look his in-laws in the eye.

"She's a Reynolds, Sam. You _so_ do. The things Third can tell—"

" _Dean!_ I am not listening to stories about my future mother-in-law's _sex life!_ "

"Oh, you won't have a choice. Once you guys announce your surprise, they'll _all_ be trying to warn you. I think Nick has slides." He grinned—the scary kind of grin that meant Dean was planning something. "Don't worry. Me and Ash will make sure the bachelor party is a horror-story-free zone."

"Oh, _God_ ," Sam groaned, and considered beating his head against the dining table. He hadn't even _thought_ about the possibility of a bachelor party, let alone that Dean was conniving with Ash—and probably Bobby and the future in-laws—on it. "Why won't she let us elope?"

"Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. Do you honestly think you'll get off _that_ easy?"

***

To be honest, Dean wasn't sure if he'd won or lost the coin toss.

The Three Stooges had been wild ever since they got home, to the point that even Maggie and the boys had skedaddled to their rooms and locked the doors. And Ananda hadn't even noticed that Uncle Sammy was gone yet. She'd noticed that he wasn't at dinner, of course, but that wasn't unusual these days. What she was going to do when she figured out that he wasn't living here anymore....

Anyhow, Marcy had gotten the bed-and-bath roundup with them, even though it _was_ cheating to toss all three of them in the same bath. He got Rissa.

Under any other circumstances, this would have called for both of them—but this wasn't something he wanted to let fester another night. Neither did Marcy. Marcy would corner Rissa for her own talk, and there'd still be a full conference at some point, but lancing this infection _now_ was more important than _who_ dealt with it. 

Rissa's door was propped open a little, which was unusual. Maybe she'd just missed the noise. Dean didn't know _how_ , but after a couple of weeks of silence, he supposed it was possible. Maybe she just wanted the reassurance that the family was back.

He knocked and pushed the door open far enough that he could see in. She wasn't reading, which he'd expected at this time of night, but was sitting in the old armchair Anne and Third had donated for a stitch chair, with her craft lamp angled straight into the pile of gauzy white fabric that filled her lap. "Hey, little phoenix," he said. "Can I come in?"

"Sure." She stuck her needle in the arm of the chair and started to fumble her way to the bottom of that armful of cloth so that she could get up.

"Stay there, I got it," he told her, and proceeded to prove it, getting the chair into the room and closing the door behind him. Dean couldn't do this with a lot of the kids, especially with his less-maneuverable upstairs chair, but the fall hazard presented by her bad leg forced Rissa to keep the clutter to a minimum. "This your project for camp?" he asked, and she nodded. "Don't guess you'd want to tell me what it is?"

"It's a present."

"Not for me, I hope." She gave him a look that she had definitely learned from her mother. Clearly it wasn't. "Shouldn't you have it in one of those hoop thingies?" 

What? He paid attention.

"The fabric's too fragile."

"Fragile, huh? Well, at least I know it's not for Sage. That boy's kind of a klutz." That got him a snicker. "Anyway, I thought you might want to know your uncle is officially moved out," he went on. "He's all your aunt's problem now." She tried, but she couldn't hide her relief at that announcement. "He said the two of you had come to an understanding. But he wouldn't tell me what. He said that was between you and him."

"Oh."

"Wanna let me in on the secret?"

"It's nothing—"

_Oh, sure, make me pull out the Daddy Voice._ "Rissa."

She caved. "I won't run out of the room or hide anymore, and he won't try to sit beside me or talk to me."

"That's it?"

"For now."

That went with what Sam had said, about it maybe easing off as the years went by. It was ridiculous, of course, they were _family_ , they shouldn't be—

Then again, like Sam said, they could be like Marcy and Sean. Maybe it was better this way. "I know you had an attack while we were gone," he said. "Was it something he did?" He didn't think it was, but he needed to make sure. Anything that could trigger one of her attacks needed to be handled carefully.

"Oh, no," she said, so quickly that he knew she wasn't lying. "They were showing us a burn test, but whenever we sat in the back, Sage's crutches kept sticking out in the aisle and people were tripping, so Mrs. Kinsey insisted he sit up front so he could lay them on the floor without anybody stumbling, and—"

"And of course you couldn't let Sage sit up front without you," Dean finished, and managed to not roll his eyes. 

"He was having trouble with his crutches," she protested.

"Still, maybe next time let him handle the burn test on his own, okay? Friends understand your limits."

"He didn't ask, Dad, I just didn't think about it. Don't take it out on him."

"Me?" he asked innocently, and got that Marcy look again. "You about to a stopping place? It's almost bedtime, and we—"

She froze, the way she always did when presented with a threat. "I—" She stopped.

"What is it, little phoenix?" Sam wouldn't tell him what the problem was that made her think they'd send her back, but had he somehow convinced Rissa to tell them?

"Dad—" Her voice shook. "I need to show you something."

"Something with the stitching?" 

"No. Something—" She hesitated, looking down at her burned fingers. "Something else."

This was definitely not good. "You can tell me anything, Rissa, you know that," he said, keeping his voice steady, reassuring.

She shook her head. "Not tell. It'll be easier if—if I show you." 

" _Show_ me?"

She nodded, and carefully folded up her project—then handed him the little book-thing that she used for her needles. "Hold this," she said.

Dean looked at her. "Just hold it? That's all?"

"Just hold it." She switched off the craft lamp, then walked over to the switch for the overhead light. "Ready?"

"Ready for what?"

"Just hold the needle case. Switch it between your hands a few times."

"I don't—" The lights went out, leaving him stranded in a room as pitch-black as demon eyes. Not so much as the glimmer of electronic light. It was what she'd insisted on having, from the time she moved in, but he hadn't realized just how _thick_ the darkness was in here. "Munchkin, not that I don't trust you, but this is kind of creepy."

"Just a minute," she said.

"Oookay." He sat there, in the darkness, flipping the needle case from right to left and back again, wondering what the hell was—

Scarred fingers touched his hands, stopping the movement, and took the needle case. They didn't fumble, and she wasn't feeling around for it. She shouldn't have known which hand he had the thing in, either. It was almost like she could see. "What the—"

The craft lamp flared on—the craft lamp, not the overhead light, and that was not only on the other side of the room from the main switch, if she'd tried to walk a straight line for it, she would've had to walk _through_ him. Rissa stood there, holding the needle case, looking at him with—fear? Worry? "How did you pull that off?"

"I keep the room neat so you can come in," she said, and there was honest-to-God fear in her voice, "not so I don't trip. I can walk through Maggie's in the dark without hitting anything."

There was no way _anybody_ could get through Maggie's room in the dark without breaking their neck, unless.... "You can see in the dark," he realized, and she nodded miserably. "Both eyes?" Another nod. That would certainly explain why she had never reacted to losing the sight in that eye the way the docs said she should; she'd only lost _normal_ vision. "And you see fire around your uncle and T.J.—no, he didn't rat you out, I guessed. That about it?"

"Yes," she whispered.

He hadn't seen her this terrified since—since the hospital, before he explained what a poltergeist was and gave her the octopus and told her how the jade inside would keep it away. "Rissa, is this what you're worried about? _This_ is why you think we'll send you back?" Her head jerked up. "Hey, I said Uncle Sammy didn't talk about why you don't like him, not that he didn't tell me anything else."

"I'm not normal."

"Of course you're not," he said, and her bad arm jerked. "You're a _Winchester_ , little phoenix. Normal's just not something we _do_. Actually, all things considered, you're kinda screwed on both sides. Sorry about that."

"But— I can—"

"Rissa." He rubbed his temple. "You're not the only one in the family with powers. I know it's not something we talk about—"

"Ananda and Kara, and I know that's why—"

"Well, actually, no. That's _not_ why we adopted them. We adopted them for the same reason we adopted you. You're ours, Rissa. You were from the second Bill brought us your case. When we saw you— You weren't just _a_ little phoenix, you were _our_ little phoenix."

"Because no one else would take me."

She stretched her burned fingers as she said that, and it didn't take a genius to follow her line of thought. "No, because _you were ours_. Nobody else was going to get a _chance_ to get you."

"Kara and Ananda need you—"

"And you don't?" he asked gently. "I know you're thirteen and you think you can take care of yourself, but trust me, little phoenix, you can't. Not yet."

"No, I _don't_ think that! I know better! That's why—" She choked on the words, the tears overflowing.

"C'mere, sweetheart." She practically lunged into his open arms, and he squeezed her tight. "You are _never_ getting rid of us," he told her. "No matter what. Not me, not your mother, not your brothers or sisters. Not when you go to college, not when you move out, not even when you get married. Not if you see fire, or see the future, or if you give birth to a spice rack because you marry that klutzy little geek named for turkey seasoning." That got a weak giggle. "You are _always_ going to be ours, even if you decide you don't want to be."

"Never," she vowed, and her arms around him tightened, the right almost as strong as the left.

"Besides," he said, when she finally let go, "now that I know what you can do, you are going to have a _much_ more important job as part of your chores." She blinked at him. " _Somebody_ in this house has to be able to get the generator started up when the power goes out at night, especially since the flashlights keep wandering off. How 'bout I show you how tomorrow?"

"Okay."

"And maybe, just _maybe_ , you can try calling your uncle by his name? Instead of _him?_ "

She looked down at her feet. "I'll try," she said, "but no promises."

"You've been around your mother too long," he said, "but points for honesty." There was a yell out in the hall, followed by what sounded like a stampede, then enough shrieks to make a banshee wince. "Think your mom needs help, or were we just invaded by very loud elephants?"

"I think Mom needs help," she said dryly, "and you'd probably better get in there before she has to yell for you."

"I always knew you were the smart one," he said. "We'll talk more about this when your mom's not got her hands full, okay?" She nodded. "Don't stay up too late."

"I won't."

Dean wheeled his chair around and headed for the door, just in time for another round of shrieks. _Oh, it's gonna be one of_ those _nights._

"Daddy?"

He froze. _Daddy._ Rissa hadn't called him that in—hell, he wasn't even sure that she ever _had_. She'd been well past the "daddy" stage by the time she came to them, her birth father not even a memory. And her voice was shaky, unsure, like she expected him to leave and come back with her adoption papers and burn them in front of her. He turned around. "Yeah?"

"Finger wiggle?"

It was that tiny, broken voice again, the one he'd first encountered when she was in a hospital burn ward, when she hated the world for not letting her die in that last fire. God, he hated that voice. And the question in it, like this time she might _not_ get it, broke his heart.

"Gimme a finger wiggle, little phoenix," he ordered gently, waggling the fingers of his once-broken arm at her, "and watch out for us in the dark, okay?"

She finally smiled, a little knowing smile that he'd expect from Maggie, but not from his somber little phoenix. "I always have," she said, and wiggled her scarred fingers back at him.

***

Sam finally figured out what the "showcase" at Rissa's camp was when Hannah dragged him to it. It was a kind of fair, where all the kids displayed their projects.

To be honest, Sam had assumed he wasn't invited now that Dean and Marcy were home to take care of it, but Hannah insisted that he come along— _Being an uncle isn't all about coloring and nail polish and Legos_ was the kindest thing she'd said when he argued—so he just trailed behind her and Dean and Marcy as they walked through the gallery of displays, feeling painfully out of place and hoping Rissa wouldn't get too pissed when she saw him here. They had a truce; that didn't mean she wanted him at her personal milestones. 

Most of the fiber kids had the same projects, varying only in colors and design: a tapestry piece about the size of a coffee-table book, four placemats labeled "huck weaving," some knitted and crocheted things (the beginners had potholders and scarves, the more advanced kids had gloves, socks, and hats), bits of handmade lace, and a double handful of small embroidery, needlepoint, and cross-stitch designs, probably meant to be Christmas tree ornaments. Every kid also had a larger main project, geared to his or her particular interests, and those things were actual works of art. These kids knew their stuff. 

They caught up with Dean and Marcy right before they got to Sage's display. Sage was finally off the crutches and into a walking cast. The kid had enough self-preservation to not _say_ anything about Dean's cast, although he did give it an arch look that spoke volumes, even while he gave them the rundown on the various techniques and yarns that had gone into the wardrobe's worth of scarves he'd knitted.

"You guys are in _so_ much trouble," Sam muttered while Sage was explaining that the thing on his tapestry was supposed to be a winged lion, not Grumpy Cat, and got Hannah's elbow in the ribs for his trouble—but it came with a wide grin. She knew exactly what he meant. 

Rissa's space was two rows over. ("How'd they get her that far away from Sage?" Hannah asked, earning herself a glare from Dean and a smack on the arm from Marcy.) Rissa's tapestry had an eagle that was much better done than Sage's lion, but it faced the opposite direction, meaning they could be hung up as a set, her placemats had the exact same color scheme, and none of the ornaments were exactly the same designs as the ones Sage had done. Thirteen years old and they had a hefty start on their household linens and future Christmas tree. And the others might not think anything of it, but Sam had a hunch as to why Rissa had an eagle and Sage a lion: the eagle was the symbol of St. John the Apostle, patron saint of burn victims, while the lion often represented St. Mark—one of the patron saints of lawyers, and Sage's mother was a lawyer.

Sam leaned close to Hannah's ear. "Should we buy the wedding present now or wait until they get to high school?" She laughed.

Then they were close enough to see the Rissa's display. In the center of Rissa's space was a mannequin's head on a pedestal, with yards of embroidered white gauze draped over it, pooling on the table. If Sam hadn't known better—if he hadn't gotten the occasional glimpse of her working on it—he'd have thought she'd cheated and _bought_ the thing. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen anything that elaborate, except maybe in a museum.

"Look at that," Hannah breathed, the first of them to manage anything. "That is fucking _exquisite_ work, Rissa—" 

"Hannahbelle!" Marcy reprimanded.

"Oh, like you don't use worse getting out of bed," Hannah retorted. "And it _is_."

Sam had to agree with her. He was impressed enough with the embroidery Rissa did on actual fabric; this stuff was transparent, the stitching that wound around the edges about ten times more solid than the backing fabric itself. And she'd done that by _hand_ , all in the white she'd asked him to buy. "What is it?" he asked, trying not to smile at his fiancée. Hannah wanted to touch that thing so badly _he_ could taste it.

"It's a wedding veil," Rissa said. 

"You're a little young for that, aren't you, munchkin?" Dean asked. "Or do I need to have _another_ talk with Sage?"

" _DAD!_ " Sam choked down a laugh at Rissa's outrage. Marcy didn't bother. Dean just smirked. "It's a present for Aunt Hannah. Grandma's dress doesn't have a veil to go with it."

Hannah's jaw dropped. Finding a veil was one of the things stressing her out; apparently, trying to match a new veil with an antique dress wasn't easy, and the dress was too traditional a style to do without one. "Me?" Hannah finally managed. "But—"

Rissa gave her a hesitant little smile. "I changed my mind. See?" She reached in and lifted part of the veil, holding it up. Vines and flowers twined around two elaborate letters: an R and a W. "Mrs. Kinsey told me how to put clips or combs in it, once you decide how you want to wear it, and I have enough leftover tulle to make a blusher if you want to go that route, and it'll be easy to attach it."

"Rissa—" Hannah stopped, at a loss for words. This might be a first. "What about—"

"I've got plenty of time."

"I—" That was all Hannah could manage, for so long that Dean and Marcy exchanged worried glances and Sam wondered if he should poke her or something. "C'mere, squirt," she said finally, holding her arms out, and Rissa stepped into them.

***

"What did Rissa say?"

"Huh?" Hannah tore her eyes away from the veil in its protective box and nest of tissue paper. She hadn't been able to stop looking at it, and her periodic exclamations over some new discovery in the complicated designs had nearly made him wreck a couple of times. (Who didn't know better than to shout "BEES!" in a moving car?)

"That hug after she told you it was for you. She whispered something in your ear. What did she say?"

The corner of Hannah's mouth quirked up. "She said she'd love her cousin even if he _was_ the spawn of Satan."

Sam rolled his eyes. "She did _not_."

"Not in so many words, no." She ran her fingers lightly over the spot where the R and W twined together. "She said she still couldn't be in the wedding, there was too much fire, whatever that meant—"

"She sees—" He bit that off, but too late. Hannah was giving him a look. "She has some kind of sight. Night-vision or some kind of infrared, I think—that's why there's no light in her room and how she could tell you were pregnant—but even during the day, when she looks at me, she sees fire. Like some kind of halo or aura, I think. It's always there, no matter what. With her history—"

" _That's_ what it is? Holy _fuck_. No wonder she kept running like hell away from you. Do—" 

"I don't know if she told them or not. It hasn't come up."

"God. That poor girl."

This was awkward. Sam tried to change the subject. "It's a hell of a present, though."

"It's not a present, Sam. It's a blessing."

He shot her a sideways glance. "What?"

"This wasn't supposed to be for me. She was stitching this for her _own_ wedding. She showed me the pattern when I was over that night she had the attack. There weren't any initials on it. She had the alphabet, but she told me that she wouldn't be adding those until she knew who she was marrying. She couldn't even put the W on until then, because of the way she wanted the letters to wrap around each other. Like this." She touched the twined letters again.

"Oh, so _that's_ what she meant when she said she had time."

"Yeah. She's got _years_ before she gets married. Plenty of time to make a new one for herself and S—whoever."

"You have no faith in the epic romances of teenagers?" he asked dryly.

"No, my money's _totally_ on Sage. But Rissa's too smart to commit to it _this_ early. And the last time I saw this, Sam— It was still hers. Sometime since that attack, she changed her plans and put in our initials and made her wedding veil a gift to me. To _us_. This is Rissa's way of giving her blessing to us."

"I don't understand." It was an impressive gift, sure, but it was still just a veil.

"She thought she was losing me. Not just losing me, losing me to a _monster_." He flinched, he couldn't help it. "But giving this to me— This is Rissa saying that it's okay, because you're _not_ a monster."

"She's still scared of me."

"Yeah, but— She's not scared of a _monster_ anymore, Sam. She's scared of a _human_. It's a subtle difference, I know, but—"

"No, I get it." He'd rather have her be scared of him yet acknowledge that he was a human any day than have her thinking of him as an actual monster. _Human_ was more hopeful.

"She didn't say it in so many words, of course—you know how Winchesters are about actually _saying_ shit—" 

"Which one of us won't tell anybody _why_ we have to be married before the surprise gets here?" Sam retorted, earning himself a smack on the arm.

"Anyway, what she _said_ was that she hoped this would help me forgive her. For not being able to be in the wedding." Her voice caught, a little. "I told her there was absolutely nothing to forgive. From either one of us." 

There was an edge of challenge in her voice, daring him to say otherwise. 

"No," Sam agreed. "Not a thing."

**_the end_ **


End file.
